Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
As of 2002, approximately 41 million people were on Medicaid. That is approximately 14% of the population of the United States. Who are the people on Medicaid? We can generally divide the people who receive Medicaid into four categories: 1) poor adults, 2) elderly who can not afford Medicare co-payments or deductibles 3) children and…
The Kaiser Family Foundation has performed their 2005 Employer Health Benefits Annual Survey. Some interesting trends: We can see the trend that employees are offered conventional health less frequently over time. On the other hand, four out of five employers have choosen to offer a PPO plan to in 2005. Three out of five workers…
In the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the United States maintained a fairly constant ratio of 141 physicians/100,000 people. In the 60’s, however, politicians began to worry that the supply of doctors would decrease in the near future. In 1963, Congress passes the Health Professions Educational Assistance Act (HPEA) in 1963. Senator Yarborough stated that the…
A recent Health Affairs article by Cynthia Smith, Cathy Cowan, Stephen Heffler and Aaron Catlin details the trends in health care spending over the last 25 years. I have compiled their results into a handy graph. In addition the the general overall increase, there are other significant findings. Between 1970 and 2004, out-of-pocket payments decreased…