Comparing Medicare And Private Insurers: Growth Rates In Spending Over Three Decades

Over the past three decades both Medicare and private insurers have initiated cost containment mechanisms to control the growth of spending on personal health care. To compare spending growth between these two payers, we present four measurement principles that should be implemented when drawing suc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inHealth Affairs Vol. 22; no. 2; pp. 230 - 237
Main Authors Boccuti, Cristina, Moon, Marilyn
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Health Affairs 01.03.2003
The People to People Health Foundation, Inc., Project HOPE
Subjects
Comparative analysis
Cost control
Costs
Customer satisfaction
Decades
Federal employees
Government programs
Health care
Health care expenditures
Health care policy
Health Care Surveys
Health Expenditures - statistics & numerical data
Health Expenditures - trends
Health insurance
Health services
Humans
Insurance industry
Insurance, Health - economics
Insurance, Health - statistics & numerical data
Medicare
Medicare - economics
Medicare - statistics & numerical data
Personal health
Personal Health Services - economics
Personal Health Services - statistics & numerical data
Private sector
Reforms
Studies
Trends
United States
United States > US
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Summary:Over the past three decades both Medicare and private insurers have initiated cost containment mechanisms to control the growth of spending on personal health care. To compare spending growth between these two payers, we present four measurement principles that should be implemented when drawing such comparisons, and we apply them to the National Health Accounts data files. We attribute Medicare's ability to equal--and using our measures, actually exceed-the private sector in controllingthe rate of health spending growth to Medicare's ability to price aggressively for the services it covers.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
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ISSN:0278-2715
1544-5208
DOI:10.1377/hlthaff.22.2.230