Health costs are growing really slowly. Americans haven’t noticed.
Ask any health economist and they’ll no doubt tell you that health care cost growth is slowing, growing at a low, unprecedented rate.
They can point to the National Health Expenditures report, which shows health care costs now growing at the same rate as the rest of the economy. Or, they can pull up new data out Tuesday from the Kaiser Family Foundation, showing that premiums grew 4 percent in 2013. That’s way lower than growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Ask any American about what direction health costs are moving, and you’ll likely get a completely different story. Preliminary results for a forthcoming Kaiser Family Foundation poll show that most Americans think that health care costs are actually growing faster than usual right now. Fewer than 10 percent say the growth is slowing down.
“We have a very moderate increase this year, but premiums go up each year,” Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman says. “People see what they pay for their premium going up and perhaps more forms of cost-sharing. We’ve been seeing a quiet revolution from more comprehensive coverage to less.”
Altman said that preliminary results from his group’s survey show that 54 percent of Americans think health care costs are growing faster than average. “A tiny number said they were growing slower,” he says. “I think that’s because, if we look at this as a long term trend, health care costs have increased in excess of wages and inflation.”
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