Wisconsin Assembly Committee Hearing Focuses on Rising Health Care Costs

During a Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Health hearing on July 16, witnesses and lawmakers reached a general conclusion that rising health costs in the state and nationwide "are not going to get better for a long while," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. The health care expenses in Wisconsin are projected to be $5,100 per person this year, compared with $4,674 per person nationally, the Journal Sentinel reports. But David Kindig, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, told the committee that the cost of "health care is high everywhere," adding, "We all know that absolute health expenditures in the United States are the highest ever experienced in the world." Witnesses said that high health costs in the state result from an aging population, consolidation of hospitals, duplication of technology and services, poor health habits, rising prescription drug costs, low payments from Medicare and Medicaid, severe nursing and medical staffing shortages, excessive hospital construction projects, waste and inefficiency. Jay Fulkerson, president of Touchpoint Health Plan, said one way to reduce costs is to have hospitals compete on quality issues, rather than on "aggressive building projects," which he said "run up debt [that] is then passed on to the public in the form of higher [health insurance] premium costs." But Michael Jaeger, a physician representing Aurora Health Care, said, "Often, the construction of health care facilities becomes an easy target for blame of health care costs. By and large, the investments we make today in the infrastructure of health care delivery will pay dividends in the future." A second hearing on health costs is scheduled for Aug. 13 (Manning, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7/16).