Medicare Spending Growth Rates: 1994-2009

What is driving Medicare spending growth? According to a recent health affairs paper by Amitabh Chandra, Maurice A. Dalton, and Jonathan Holme (2013), the answer is post acute care. The authors use Medicare claims (5 percent MedPAR sample) to examine changes in Meidcare spending between 1994 and 2009. The authors find that post-acute spending has…

Usual Source of Care Increases Spending

Does having a specialist as your usual source of care (USOC) increase costs? “Among high-cost beneficiaries, the 27.8 percent attributed to a medical specialist as their USOCphysician had U.S.$1,839 greater costs than those attributed to primary care physicians, representing roughly 4 percent of the mean cost of care. Although this may reflect unmeasured patient preferences…