Americans who get health insurance through their jobs are not using more medical care than they were five years ago, but they are spending more due to soaring medical prices, according to a new report.
Americans have seen a rise in medical prices. Health Care Cost Institute conducted an analysis that Health spending for the more than 150 million people who receive insurance from their employers was $5,407 per person. They found that this was a 4.6 percent increase over 2015 even though people’s use of health care dropped or stayed the same over a five year period.
The number of emergency room visit increased between 2012 and 2016 by two percent. The average price of those visits soared 31 percent, to $1,917.
“The health-care cost curve, at least for the employer-sponsored insurance population, seems to be trending in the wrong direction again,” said Niall Brennan, president of the Health Care Cost Institute. “The cumulative change over a five-year period basically highlights, very starkly, that working Americans are using or consuming the same or less health care, yet the prices they’re paying for that health care are going way up.”
Researchers saw a surprising find that people were going to specialists more than primary care physicians.
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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/01/23/working-americans-are-using-less-health-care-but-spending-more/?utm_term=.344a12b81976
