Health care spending patterns of U.S. consumers, by age, 1998, 2003, and 2008
نویسندگان
چکیده
ANN C. FOSTER and CRAIG J. KREISLER T he National Health Care Expenditure Accounts (NHEA), the official estimates of total health care spending in the United States, show that in 2008, U.S. health care spending by business, governments, and households was $2.3 trillion, or $7,681 per person. The NHEA also shows that in 2008 health care spending was 16.2 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), up from 13.5 percent in 1998.1 NHEA estimates indicate that households accounted for 34 percent of spending on health services and supplies in 1998, 32 percent in 2003, and 31 percent in 2008. In 1998, household health care spending averaged 5.3 percent of adjusted personal income, increasing to 5.8 percent in 2003, and 5.9 percent in 2008.2 Although NHEA data supply a great deal of information to the Government and play an important role in health care policy decisions, they fail to provide a complete picture of how increases in health care spending influence household budget decisions. For this reason, Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are used to provide a snapshot of out-of-pocket health care spending changes among consumer units3 by age of the reference person4 in 1998, 2003, and 2008. This study examines changes in total health
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