- Soaring cost of healthcare sets a record, By Noam N. Levey, February 4, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “In a stark reminder of growing costs, the government has released a new estimate that healthcare spending grew to a record 17.3% of the U.S. economy last year, marking the largest one-year jump in its share of the economy since the government started keeping such records half a century ago. The almost $2.5 trillion spent in 2009 was $134 billion more than the previous year, when healthcare consumed 16.2% of the gross domestic product, according to an annual report by independent actuaries at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, scheduled for release Thursday. The nonpartisan accounting agency also projected that as early as next year, the country could mark another milestone as government picks up more than half of the nation’s total healthcare tab for the first time…”
- Public health tab to hit milestone, By Peter Landers, February 4, 2010, Wall Street Journal: “For the first time, government programs next year will account for more than half of all U.S. health-care spending, federal actuaries predict, as the weak economy sends more people into Medicaid and slows growth of private insurance. The figures show how federal and state spending is taking a bigger role while Congress hesitates over a health-care overhaul. Government health programs are a growing burden on the federal budget, which is running annual deficits of more than $1 trillion, and rising health costs continue to batter private industry. By 2020, according to the new projections, about one in five dollars spent in the U.S. will go to health care, a proportion far beyond any other industrialized nation…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty