Federal workers have updated a must-have tool for health insurance agents and brokers: the latest batch of national health care spending data.
A team at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has stuffed the summary article, and the spreadsheets behind the article, full of health care system revenue and expenditure numbers for 2016.
CMS analysts report here, for example, that overall U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, to $3.3 trillion, or $13,348 per person.
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Health care spending ate up 17.9 percent of the United States' $18.6 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016.
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A team led by Micah Hartman has published an easy-to-read, copyrighted version of the data, behind a paywall, on the website of Health Affairs, an academic journal. That version of the data is available here.
The team has also published a collection of data spreadsheets and more technical summaries of the data on the CMS website. That collection of data, which is copyright-free, is available here.
All of the figures in the article and the spreadsheets are fair game for producers to use.
Producers can:
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Read the data to see for themselves, free from media bias, what's been happening to the U.S. health care finance and delivery finance systems.
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Put the data marketing presentations, brochures, social media posts, web videos and blog articles.
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Build the data into proposals.
For a look at five especially useful gulps of information from the article, and the spreadsheets, read on.
1. National Health Expenditure Basics
|
| 2015 | 2016 | Percent Change |
| Total GDP (national income) | $18.1 trillion | $18.6 trillion | +2.8 |
| GDP per capita (in other words: per person) | $56,580 | $57,751 | +2.1 |
| Total health expenditures | $3.2 trillion | $3.3 trillion | +4.3 |
| Health expenditures per capita | $9,994 | $10,348 | +3.5 |
2. Total spending by coverage type
|
| 2015 | 2016 | Percent Change |
| Private health insurance | $1.07 trillion | $1.12 trillion | +5.1 |
| Medicare | $648.8 billion | $671.1 billion | +3.6 |
| Medicaid | $544.1 billion | $565.5 billion | +3.9 |
3. Per enrollee spending by coverage type
| 2015 | 2016 | Percent Change | |
| Private health insurance | $5,445 | $5,721 | +5.1 |
| Medicare | $11,951 | $12,046 | +0.8 |
| Medicaid | $7,870 | $7,941 | +0.9 |
4. Notable spending categories
These figures represent the change in total spending within a category between 2015 and 2016.
Hospital care: +4.7 percent (down from 5.7 percent)
Physician care: +5.4 percent (down from 5.9 percent)
Dental care: +4.6 percent (up from 4.4 percent)
Home health care: +4 percent (down from 5.8 percent)
Nursing home care: +2.9 percent (down from 3.7 percent)
Durable medical equipment: +4.9 percent (up from 4.1 percent)
Retail prescription drugs: +1.3 percent (down from 8.9 percent)
5. Medical research
Spending on noncommercial medical research increased just 2.6 percent in 2016, but that's up from an increase of 1.2 percent in 2015.
The increase in spending on noncommercial medical research is the biggest the government has recorded since 2010
6. Private health insurance
Here are the 2016 spending figures, and year-over-year change figures, for some noteworthy spending categories:
Hospital care: $426.7 billion (+6.6 percent)
Physician and clinical services: $287.3 billion (+5.8 percent)
Dental services: $57.7 billion (+4.8 percent)
Home health care: $9.6 (+2.8 percent)
Nursing care facilities and continuing care retirement communities: $14.8 billion (+5.9 percent)
Prescription drugs: $142.6 billion (+0.8 percent)
Durable medical equipment: $9.9 billion (+9.5 percent)
7. Net cost of insurance
This is what private health insurers have left over for marketing, compliance costs, producer compensation and profit after paying claims.
2015: $125.5 billion
2016: $129.6 billion
Change: +3.3 percent
8. Net cost of insurance as a share of private health insurance spending
2015: 11.7 percent
2016: 11.5 percent
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
