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Health Care Spending Paper

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Health Care Spending Paper

Candace Kovacs

HCS 440
January 23, 2012

Pranab Rout

Health Care Spending

The United States is spending trillions of dollars on health care every year. Health care spending is continuing to rise to higher levels at unsustainable rates. The excessive amounts spent on health care accounts for a substantial portion of the national budget. Trends such as the aging of the population, obesity, and technological changes are expected to affect the future of health care spending patterns (RAND Corporation, 2011). Even though health care spending seems excessive right now, there are several ways it can be addressed effectively to decrease the amount in the future.

Spending

The National Health Expenditures (NHE) includes the amount of spending on private and public administrative costs, personal health services, government public health spending and investments involving costs of equipment, non-commercial medical research, and buildings (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). The current level of the NHE has raised $2.1 trillion in the year 2006, $2.25 trillion in 2007, and projects to reach $4.3 trillion by 2017 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). The most recent forecasts of health care estimates a yearly growth rate of seven percent, which equals to the gross domestic product (GDP) of 19.5 % by 2017 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011). This projection expects health care to consume even more of the GDP, although the population ages, and more medical devices and expenses drugs are developed.

National Health Expenditures (2009)—Actual and Projected, 1965–2018 Graph

(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2011)

[pic]

The spending on health care is massive because consumers are

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