Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Number is $937 billion
The National Academy of Medicine published a commentary about the future of health care policy priorities in JAMA two weeks ago. They exhort us to pay for value, empower people, activate communities and connect care – and to measure what matters, modernize skills, accelerate real-world evidence, and advance science. All of these priorities make sense –and are especially important in light of Saturday’s March(es) for Science.
What caught my eye more than these important priorities, though, was statistics on how health care is essentially gobbling up government spending. In 1974, one in $20 spent by the government was on health care. In 2015 it was $1 in $4!
That’s good for employment, and it’s good for innovation in health care. We live longer and better lives in 2017 than we did in 1974.
But there are consequences. The Environmental Protection Agency budget was $7.9 billion in 2000 – and was $8.1 billion in 2016. But the paltry increase masks a huge decline in the inflation adjusted budget. The inflation adjusted budget in 2000 would have been $10.9 billion – so the 2016 budget was a 25% decline. The EPA employed over 18,000 in 1998; this had declined to under 15,400 in 2016 – a 15% drop. All of this is before the almost 1/3 cut in the EPA budget proposed by the Trump Administration.
A healthy environment leads to lower rates of disease and healthier Americans – and is usually more cost-effective (or even cost-saving) than investments in medical care. For instance, the Clean Air Act has a cost:benefit ratio of beween 4:1 and 10:1. We need to control medical care costs to leave room in the federal budget for other important initiatives.
EmoticonEmoticon