Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
That is according to the 2024 national health expenditure data published in Health Affairs last week (Hartman et al. 2026). Here is the abstract: Health care spending in the US reached $5.3 trillion and increased 7.2 percent in 2024, similar to growth of 7.4 percent in 2023, as increased demand for health care influenced this two-year trend. As…
Perhaps at least according to Tyler Cowen. Here is an excerpt from his Conversation with Dan Wang: WANG: …health care is what, 20% of the American GDP?COWEN: 17 point something. That’s a lot, right?WANG: That’s a lot. That feels too high to me. I feel like we should be ringing better efficiencies out here.COWEN: It seems not high enough,…
Today, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the results from the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program for Initial Price Applicability Year (IPAY) 2027 (press release). What was the average reduction in drug prices? Across the 15 drugs included in the 2027 negotiation, on average, drug prices fell by 62% (median: 63%); accounting…
The 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey came out last week. Here are some key findings: Premium costs The average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance in 2025 are $9,325 for single coverage and $26,993 for family coverage. Over the last year, the average single premium increased by 5% and the average family premium increased by…
CMS’s Office of the Actuary predicts that national healthcare expenditures (NHE) will increase from 17.6% of GDP in 2023 to 20.3% of GDP by 2033. The Keehan et al. (2025) paper provides more details: National health expenditures are projected to have grown 8.2 percent in 2024 and to increase 7.1 percent in 2025, reflecting continued…
That is according to a paper by Wolff et al. (2025). They use 2011-2022 data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) linked to data from the National Study of Caregiving (NSOC). Using these data, they find. …the numbers of family caregivers providing help to older adults increased by nearly six million between…
The Incidental Economist website has a helpful explainer video. The truth is that higher cost is due to both higher prices and more utilization of healthcare goods and services. It is not caused by any one stakeholder within the healthcare ecosystem. Reducing health care costs would require significant–and often painful–tradeoffs.
In the US, opioid abuse has become and epidemic. However, in the past year, there is some hope that this epidemic is starting to reverse. Opioid deaths have fallen by 16.9% in the past year. Why have deaths fallen? According to The Economist, no one is sure: One possibility is a supply shock…the amount of…
A paper by Kowal et al. (2023) does in fact measure the disparities in health outcomes. To do this, they use data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to estimate differences in life expectancy (LY), quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE), and disability-free life…
ISPOR Europe kicks off this week in Barcelona, Spain. In honor of ISPOR, I will summarize some key attributes of the Spanish health care system based on a 2024 report from the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and the Instituto Aragones de Ciencias de la Salud. Country overview Population: 48.4 million (as of…