Health care spending growth: How different is the United States from the rest of the OECD?

Health Affairs

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 154-161

  White, Chapin ^a  

^a Ford House Office Building   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; COMPARATIVE STUDY; DEVELOPED COUNTRY; ECONOMICS; EPIDEMIOLOGY; EUROPE; HEALTH CARE COST; HUMAN; POPULATION DYNAMICS; STATISTICS; UNITED STATES;

DEVELOPED COUNTRIES; EUROPE; HEALTH CARE SURVEYS; HEALTH EXPENDITURES; HUMANS; POPULATION DYNAMICS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33846705820     PISSN: 02782715     EISSN: 02782715     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.26.1.154     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. S. Glied, Chronic Condition: Why Health Reform Fails (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997);
2. and J.P. Newhouse, "Financing Medicare in the Next Administration," New England Journal of Medicine 351, no. 17 (2004): 1714-1716.
3. G.F. Anderson et al., "Health Spending and Outcomes: Trends in OECD Countries, 1960-1998," Health Affairs 19, no. 3 (2000): 150-157;
4. and G.F. Anderson and J.P. Poullier, "Health Spending, Access, and Outcomes: Trends in Industrialized Countries," Health Affairs 18, no. 3 (1999): 178-192.
5. The Medicare Trustees assume that the long-term average rate of excess growth will be 1.0 percent, based on analyses of historical trends. See Medicare Trustees, 2006 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, May 2006, http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/economic-policy/reports/medicare.pdf (accessed 22 September 2006).
6. See also Congressional Budget Office, The Long-Term Budget Outlook (Washington: CBO, 2003).
7. G.F. Anderson et al., "Health Spending in the United States and the Rest of the Industrialized World," Health Affairs 24, no. 4 (2005): 903-914.
8. "Purchasing power parity" exchange rates are calculated by comparing the prices in different countries of an identical broad basket of goods and services.
9. Suppose A = [B x C].When logarithmic growth rates are used, the rate of growth in A equals the rate of growth in B plus the rate of growth in C.
10. G.F. Anderson and P.S. Hussey, "Population Aging: A Comparison among Industrialized Countries," Health Affairs 19, no. 3 (2000): 191-203.
11. For comparison, the median rate of excess growth among the OECD over the period 1970-2002 was 1.4 percent, slightly higher than the rate of excess growth among the OECD aggregate (1.1 percent). The difference between the excess growth rates for the median and the aggregate reflects the fact that, among the OECD, the rate of excess growth was inversely related to population.
12. E. Meara, C. White, and D.M. Cutler, "Trends in Medical Spending by Age, 1963-2000," Health Affairs 23, no. 4 (2004): 176-183;
13. and U.E. Reinhardt, "Does the Aging of the Population Really Drive the Demand for Health Care?" Health Affairs 22, no. 6 (2003): 27-39.
14. To say that real growth in GDP per capita "explains" a certain share of real growth in health spending assumes the following: If GDP per capita rose by a certain percentage, then, holding all else constant (such as demographics, technological capabilities in all sectors of the economy, and institutional arrangements), health spending per capita would rise by an equal percentage.
15. J.P. Newhouse, "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?" Journal of Economic Perspectives 6, no. 3 (1992): 3-21;
16. W.B. Schwartz, "The Inevitable Failure of Current Cost-Containment Strategies," Journal of the American Medical Association 257, no. 2 (1987): 220-224;
17. D.M. Cutler, "Technology, Health Costs, and the NIH," National Institutes of Health Roundtable on Biomedical Research, Bethesda, Maryland, November 1995 (mimeo);
18. and Technical Review Panel on the Medicare Trustees Reports, Review of Assumptions and Methods of the Medicare Trustees' Financial Projections (Baltimore: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2000).
19. D.M. Cutler, Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America's Health Care System (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
20. E. Docteur and H. Oxley, "Health-System Reform: Lessons from Experience," chap. 1 in OECD, Towards High-Performing Health Systems (Paris: OECD Publications, 2004).
21. H.J. Aaron and W.B. Schwartz, The Painful Prescription: Rationing Hospital Care (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1984).