Did you know that health care inflation has been lower than overall inflation for the past decade? It has:
This has kept Medicare costs nearly flat recently, though CMS projects this will change over the upcoming decade:
The reason for the increase is not because medical inflation is expected to be high. In fact, CMS estimates it will continue to be lower than overall inflation. It's because the leading edge of the boomer generation is starting to enter their 80s, when they'll require far more medical care than they have in their 70s.
Medicare spending per beneficiary will increase, but what about total Medicare spending? The number of beneficiaries over 85 must be considerably less than that of those 65-84, no?
This reality matters for governments and insurers, but it's only half the issue for individuals (and thus the political salience of medical costs).
The BIG problem is the unpredictability. People are terrified of interacting with the medical system (and delay doing so, sometimes with bad consequences) because everything is such a crapshoot. Did you dot all the i's and cross all the t's before beginning an expensive procedure? Are you doing the right thing in paying big amounts now on the assumption that somehow it will later be sorted out? What's with this endless stream of papers after the big event? Did you choose the correct hospital (not just in terms of quality, but in terms of what and how they charge for this procedure? etc etc
In a sense this is like College, in that College has been far too clever by half, in trying to both pretend that costs are extremely high ("we must be super-selective if we can get away with such costs") and trying to pretend "no really, costs are not out of control, we don't need regulation; if you look at the averages and scholarships and all the rest it's really not that bad".
This nonsense has pleased no-one and is one cause (hardly the only one!) of the contempt now felt by most of the US towards academia. But this is a maze you only have to fight once, and you can more or less find a fair degree of help for the process. Medical costs encompass all those features, but in far worse form.
Meaning the hatred of the US consumer towards the entities that force this uncertainty on them isn't going to go away, regardless of what technicalities may lurk in average costs. My terror is not based on *average costs*, it's based on worst case scenarios and just how they can still play out.
That's why we have to end the effort to negotiate prices for prescription drugs and cut Medicare and Medicaid.
fyi: Many states do not cover Alzheimer's care.
Eighty-year-olds will need more healthcare than seventy-year olds?
I'm 71 and I need new knees, new eyes, new arteries, and a new brain. It's hard to imagine this getting worse.
Kevin, your heading commits the common sin of mixing up derivatives of time. Of course, real medical have not been negative - their price has been going down. Neither the total amount, nor I think even the change in the total amount has been negative of this time period (and are you talking per capita)? Maybe I'm a crank, but I hate this sort of imprecision.
Wow. Good thing we got Obamacare in *before* the Boomers hit the Medicare rolls en masse!