Washington – Within a decade, an aging America will be spending one of every five dollars on health care, according to government analysts.
The nation’s total health-care bill by 2015: more than $4 trillion. Consumers will foot about half the bill, the government the rest.
Hospital costs will rise more quickly than previously anticipated, reflecting a construction boom for urban hospitals.
Meanwhile, drug costs are expected to be somewhat restrained, in part because of the new Medicare prescription drug program.
The projections, published in the journal Health Affairs, come as President Bush focuses on the rising cost of health care. In his State of the Union address last month, the president pushed health savings accounts and the high-deductible insurance plans that go with them. The administration predicts Americans would become more thrifty if they had to pay more of the upfront costs, which occurs with health savings accounts.
The report, written by analysts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, attributes rising costs to the aging of the baby-boom population and the changing nature of health insurance. They forecast a 7.2 percent annual increase in health-care costs over the coming decade. That’s in line with the 7.4 percent increase in 2005.
Still, the overall economy is projected to grow at a rate of 5.1 percent over the coming decade, which means health care will play an ever-growing role.
