GDP stats

Since there are so many stat heads here. . . Do any of you know where I can find what portion of GDP health care and allied health services consume. I recall hearing it was something in the neighborhood of 12% (the figure 12.5% i.e., 1/8) comes to mind but I need to back it up for a presentation I am giving next week

CMAJ • July 23, 2002; 167 (2)
© 2002 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors


The impact of managed care on costs and quality

Since the advent of managed care in the early 1990s, health care spending in the United States has slowed. From 1993 to 1998, the share of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to national health expenditures declined from 13.7% to 13.5%, and premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance actually grew more slowly than the per capita GDP.22 However, the United States continues to spend far more on medical care than any other nation: in 1998, it spent $4270 per capita, compared with $2400 in Germany, which spent the second-highest amount, and $2250 in Canada.14,15

http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/health/20040108-1347-healthcarespending.html

Health care spending hits record $1.6 trillion, up 9.3 percent in a year

By Mark Sherman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:47 p.m. January 8, 2004
WASHINGTON – Health care spending in the United States surged to $1.6 trillion in 2002 – about $5,440 for every American – and outpaced growth in the rest of the economy for a fourth straight year.
Hospital spending and prescription drug costs fueled the 9.3 percent increase over 2001, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Thursday.
"This continued acceleration injects pressure into the health care system, and everyone – from businesses, to government, to consumers – is affected," Katharine Levit, a CMS official and the lead author of the report, said at a news conference.
Early indications, however, are that growth in spending slowed in 2003, according to the report, published in the journal Health Affairs.
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New York Times, August 21, 2003
Health Costs Compared
By REUTERS


OSTON, Aug. 20 — A comparison of health care costs has found that 31 cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States pays administrative costs, nearly double the rate in Canada.

Researchers who prepared the comparison said today that the United States wasted more money on health bureaucracy than it would cost to provide health care to the tens of millions of the uninsured. Americans spend $752 more per person per year than Canadians in administrative costs, investigators from Harvard and the Canadian Institute for Health Information found.

January 9, 2004
New York Times
Health Spending Rises to Record 15% of Economy
By ROBERT PEAR

ASHINGTON, Jan. 8 — Health spending accounts for nearly 15 percent of the nation's economy, the largest share on record, the Bush administration said on Thursday. The Department of Health and Human Services said that health care spending shot up 9.3 percent in 2002, the largest increase in 11 years, to a total of $1.55 trillion. That represents an average of $5,440 for each person in the United States.

Hospital care and prescription drugs accounted for much of the overall increase, which outstripped the growth in the economy for the fourth year in a row, the report said. Complete data on health care spending in 2003 are not yet available, and some experts say the rapid growth of the last few years may be slowing.

Prof. Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton, said: "The increase in health spending is no surprise whatsoever. This is what the American people asked for when they abolished managed care." Many consumers rebelled at limits on their choice of doctors and hospitals.

The increase comes before baby boomers become heavy users of care. It does not reflect the increased demand for prescription drugs likely to result from the Medicare law signed last month by President Bush. "We've had two successive years of rather dramatic increases in the share of gross domestic product going to health care," said Katharine R. Levit, director of national health statistics at the department. "Everyone, from businesses to government to consumers, is affected."

Projections put health spending at 17.7 percent of gross domestic product, or G.D.P., by 2012, the government said last February.

...

These are great numbers and will go well in my presentation in ATL on Monday. Thanks again, Matt