Health care costs continue to rise, but at a lower rate

Physicians' share of the increased spending falls.

By Mike Norbut, AMNews staff. June 30, 2003.

Despite a slight decline in growth compared with 2001, health care spending in 2002 still increased at nearly four times the rate of the overall U.S. economy, according to a study released by the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington, D.C.-based policy research organization.

Costs per privately insured American increased 9.6% in 2002, compared with 10% in 2001, marking the first time in five years that cost increases did not surpass totals for the previous year. Researchers attributed the leveling off to more costs being passed on to consumers and a continued slowdown of prescription drug spending.

Still, the two years were the largest back-to-back increases in a decade, and the jump in 2002 was far beyond the 2.7% growth in gross domestic product, researchers said.

Employer-based health insurance premiums rose an average of 15% in 2003, even with employees taking on more of the burden in the form of higher co-pays and deductibles, said Paul Ginsburg, PhD, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change and one of the authors of the study. Without that employee burden, premiums would have risen an average of 18%, researchers said.

At the current pace, "insurance will become more difficult to afford, leading to more uninsured people," Dr. Ginsburg said.