'What’s Driving Medical-Care Spending Growth?'

I'm still digesting exactly what this means for health care policy, but if the growth in health care costs is being "driven by the number of treated enrollees as opposed to the cost of treatment," is that a problem?:

What’s Driving Medical-Care Spending Growth?, by Adam Hale Shapiro, FRBSF Economic Letter: The United States spends more per capita on health care than any other developed country. In 2010, health care accounted for more than 17% of gross domestic product (GDP), more than double the average of other developed countries. In addition, the pace of health-care spending growth has been rapid, outpacing overall GDP growth. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) projects that, by 2020, health-care spending will total $4.64 trillion, representing approximately 20% of GDP (Keehan et al. 2011). Understanding the source of this growth is essential to control costs, or “bend the cost curve,” without sacrificing access to care or quality.

This Economic Letter summarizes recent research (Dunn, Liebman, and Shapiro 2012a, b, c) that pinpoints the distinct sources of medical-care spending growth in the employer-sponsored and private health insurance market. The privately insured health-care market is economically important. Total spending for employer-sponsored private health insurance was $709 billion in 2011 (Gaynor and Newman 2012), which was approximately 30% more than Medicare outlays that year. Unlike the Medicare market in which CMS fixes payments to providers, private-sector prices are set through negotiations between insurers and providers. As a result, those prices are sensitive to competitive factors. Thus, spending growth in the privately insured market can stem from a multitude of sources, including growth in negotiated services prices. ...

Conclusion

An analysis of the components of medical-care expenditures indicates that spending growth in the privately insured market is being driven by the number of treated enrollees as opposed to the cost of treatment. In fact, patterns of utilization of medical services held spending growth in check. This is most evident for cardiology conditions, in which the quantity of services per episode of care declined sizably over the sample period.

Thus, “bending the cost curve” does not necessarily imply reducing growth in the cost of treatment. Rather, it may also imply slowing the growth in the number of enrollees receiving medical treatment. Treatment growth is most pronounced for preventive care. But we are skeptical that holding down growth in this area would be beneficial. In fact, a higher percentage of enrollees receiving preventive treatment may lead to lower expenditures in the future, better health outcomes, or both. Ultimately, more research is needed to determine which forms of spending growth are wasteful and which are productive in terms of health outcomes.

A shift from inpatient to outpatient services has caused utilization of services for certain conditions to decline. At the same time though, some areas, such as cancer treatment, have seen growth in both service utilization and prices. In the case of cancer, we hypothesize that cost growth reflects extensive innovation in treating malignancies. A more comprehensive study of cancer treatment would lead to a better understanding of the rising costs in this area.