The report by TransUnion Healthcare said that out-of-pocket costs jumped to an average $2,491 per patient in 2014, up from $2,245 the year before, mostly because of skyrocketing costs in joint-replacement procedures for areas such as the knee and hip. Costs for those procedures surged by nearly 20 percent, it said.
“Our latest report demonstrates that consumers continue to feel the pressure of rising health care costs,” said Gerry McCarthy, president of TransUnion Healthcare, a subsidiary of the large credit report company. “Despite a slowly improving economy, many consumers are finding they have less money to make these payments. This issue is not just about patients, though, as thousands of health care administrators across the country face the challenge of providing quality care while also seeking fair compensation.”
"This increase occurred prior to the government reporting that 16.4 million people now have secured health care coverage during the most recent open enrollment period of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," TransUnion said.
Read: Employer health plan deductibles see big jump
Compounding the problem, the report found, is that the amount of revolving credit that people can tap to help pay increasing health care costs decreased. For every $100 in health care costs, consumers had $1,350 in revolving credit to potentially make those payments in the last quarter of 2014, Transunion said. For the same quarter in 2013, consumers had $1,520 in revolving credit for every $100 in health care costs.
Transunion said the report included anonymous data estimates for patient payment responsibilities from thousands of providers, including health care clinics from across the nation.
http://www.benefitspro.com/2015/04/24/out-of-pocket-costs-jump-11-percent?eNL=553fd162160ba04733cccc32&utm_source=BenefitsBrokerPro&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=BenefitsPro_eNLs&_LID=157610070
I'm not sure what you wanted me to take away from this, but I found this sentence very interesting, “Despite a slowly improving economy, many consumers are finding they have less money to make these payments. This issue is not just about patients, though, as thousands of health care administrators across the country face the challenge of providing quality care while also seeking fair compensation.”
ReplyDeleteFirst in foremost, it states clearly what no one can ignore anymore, namely that even when you do have a job, it is a shitty, buyers market for labor. This is not going to change anytime soon and there is not a damn thing any POTUS can do about it.
The second part of that sentence though was curious. Perhaps I'm misreading the context of what a health care administrator is, but what I interpret it to mean is that some insurance person is complaining that their margins, not the margins of the doctor, but the margins of the paper pusher are getting cut thin. As I get closer and closer to being a primary care provider, I still have yet to see what insurance companies do that improves the lives of anyone. By choice, the doctor I am doing my current clinical rotations with will not accept mega HMO health plans. By contrast, he has been more than willing to accept new patients coming to him because of Obama care. Also by his choice, he will not see more than about 15 patients a day. Admittedly, he does other things on the side to earn some extra money, but this has enabled him to run his practice the way he wants to and to spend as much time with his patients as he wants to. he's definitely a unique breed.
As I get into the last two semesters of my program, I will need to complete 500 odd hours of clinical work by the end of the year and I'm sure I will now get to really see how the sausage is made. I have already seen some of the ridiculous hoops that providers have to go through for both private insurance and medicare. My preceptor constantly has to field a call from some insurance snot who won't cover a particular medicine because the doctor didn't call the insurance company first and wait on the phone for an hour to beg for it to be covered. The government may pay less for service, but in some ways, so far, it seems like less of hassle to deal with them.
Want to drastically raise the price of ANYTHING? Let the government get involved.
ReplyDeleteHey Gotta, hope all is well.
DeleteYou too, Mike.
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