{"id":277336,"date":"2010-02-04T09:11:03","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T14:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2010\/02\/04\/what-costs-282-million-an-hour\/"},"modified":"2010-02-04T09:11:03","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T14:11:03","slug":"what-costs-282-million-an-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/277336","title":{"rendered":"What Costs $282 Million an Hour?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HealthThe U.S. spent $2.472 trillion on health care last year, according to a paper<\/a> out today in the journal Health Affairs. That’s $282 million an hour.<\/p>\n

Health spending as a percent of GDP — a key metric that shows how much of all U.S. spending goes to health care — rose from 16.2% in 2008 to 17.3% in 2009, far higher than any other industrialized country. That’s the largest one-year increase since 1960, when the feds started closely tracking national health expenditures.<\/p>\n

The figure went up so much because health spending continued to rise, even as the overall economy shrank. The aging population accounted for a small part of this rise, but two other factors were more important: rising prices and increasing use. Health-care prices rose by 3.2% in 2009, according to the Health Affairs paper, significantly faster than prices rose for the overall economy. Utilization, which includes both volume and intensity of health-care services, rose by 1.5%.<\/p>\n

The share of health-care spending paid for by the government (through programs such as Medicare and Medicaid) is also rising, and is projected to cross the 50% threshold soon. A story<\/a> in this morning’s WSJ looks at what the government’s rising share of health costs means for the health-care debate in Washington.<\/p>\n

Photo: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n

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The U.S. spent $2.472 trillion on health care last year, according to a paper out today in the journal Health Affairs. That’s $282 million an hour. Health spending as a percent of GDP — a key metric that shows how much of all U.S. spending goes to health care — rose from 16.2% in 2008 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}