Health Care Spending Slowdown From 2000 To 2010 Was Driven By Lower Growth In Cost Per Case, According To A New Data Source

Abstract

In 2015 the Bureau of Economic Analysis released an experimental set of measures referred to as the Health Care Satellite Account, which tracks national health care spending by medical condition. These statistics improve the understanding of the health care sector by blending medical claims data and survey data to present measures of national spending and cost of treatment by condition. This article introduces key aspects of the new account and uses it to study the health spending slowdown that occurred in the period 2000-10. Our analysis of the account reveals that the slowdown was driven by a reduction of growth in cost per case but that spending trends varied greatly across conditions and differentially affected the slowdown. More than half of the overall slowdown was accounted for by a slowdown in spending on circulatory conditions. However, there were more dramatic slowdowns in spending on categories such as endocrine system and musculoskeletal conditions than in spending on other categories, such as cancers.

Adjusting Health Expenditures for Inflation: A Review of Measures for Health Services Research in the United States

“…Third, the growth rates may differ if individuals shift across plan types (e.g., from PPO to HMO). Dunn, Rittmueller, and Whitmire (2015) find that the MCE in the HCSA count grew by 4.1-4.4 percent per year between 2000 and 2010, compared to 3.1 percent per year for the official PCE health index. Most of this difference occurred early in the decade.…”

“…Currently, the BEA measure does not adjust for patient severity. Dunn, Rittmueller, and Whitmire (2015) find that severity adjustment would tend to reduce MCE inflation. The MCE index is currently produced with a 3-year lag.…”

“…, ; Dunn, Leibman, and Shapiro ). BEA recently released a Health Care Satellite Account (HCSA) that reports spending and associated cost indexes by disease condition (Dunn, Rittmueller, and Whitmire , ). National spending and price indexes by disease category 2000 to 2012 are available online (http://www.bea.gov/national/health_care_satellite_account.htm) and are updated annually.…”

“…Several papers have conducted studies measuring the cost of treatment over time using either MEPS data or claims data for a comprehensive list of medical conditions (e.g., Aizcorbe et al 2013;Bradley 2013;Bradley et al 2010;Rosen et al 2013;Roehrig and Rousseau 2011;Starr, Dominiak, and Aizcorbe 2014;Aizcorbe and Nestoriak 2011;Dunn et al 2013Dunn et al , 2014Dunn, Leibman, and Shapiro 2015). BEA recently released a Health Care Satellite Account (HCSA) that reports spending and associated cost indexes by disease condition (Dunn, Rittmueller, andWhitmire 2015, 2016). National spending and price indexes by disease category 2000 to 2012 are available online (http://www.bea.gov/national/health_care_satellite_account.htm) and are updated annually.…”

How much does the treatment of each major disease cost? A decomposition of Swiss National Health Accounts

“…However, the most comprehensive efforts to decompose spending by diseases have been carried in the USA. While some studies have focused on decomposing US healthcare spending by diseases [10,11], others have focused on the impact on spending of potential drivers, such as changes in cost per treated case or changes in treated prevalence [12][13][14][15][16][17]. To the best of our knowledge, the only study decomposing total spending by the same collectively exhaustive set of disease classifications was the study by Dieleman and coauthors [11], which decomposed US personal healthcare spending (corresponding to 85% of the US's NHA) into 155 diseases.…”