Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is 16%
I’m used to seeing time-lapse maps of the United States that show that society is crumbling and that our health is just getting worse and worse. For instance, these CDC maps are in many presentations (mine too!) – they show obesity getting relentlessly worse.
That’s why yesterday’s JAMA has set of time lapse maps that warms my heart. It’s no surprise that Medicare costs less per person in 2013 than it did in 2009. The average age of a beneficiary went down a tad (as us boomers age into Medicare), and the Affordable Care Act meant that hospitals got much lower rate increases than expected.
It’s a shocker that mortality dropped from 5.3 to 4.85% (a 16% drop), and the number of hospitalizations of Medicare beneficiaries dropped by over 23%. Even inflation-adjusted end of life care costs dropped dramatically from a peak in 2009.
Total inflation-adjusted Medicare costs per beneficiary dropped almost 15%, from $3290 to $2801.
There’s no clear answer as to why things are getting so much better. Each successive year there are relatively fewer smokers aging into Medicare, and improvements in air quality lead to longer lives and fewer hospitalizations for those with lung disease. A combination of improved quality improvement processes at hospitals, technology and pharmaceutical improvements, and even pay for performance could all share some credit.
In the meantime, let’s bask in this great news!
(I’m riding the Pan Mass Challenge, a 192 mile bike ride to raise money for cancer research, this weekend, and will be on vacation next week – so posts will likely be sparse. Here’s a link to post from 2013 and 2014 with some musings on charity athletic events.)
