- Health spending rose in ’09, but at low rate, By Robert Pear, January 5, 2011, New York Times: “Total national health spending grew by 4 percent in 2009, the slowest rate of increase in 50 years, as people lost their jobs, lost health insurance and deferred medical care, the federal government reported on Wednesday. Still, health care accounted for a larger share of a smaller economy – a record 17.6 percent of the total economic output in 2009, the report said. The economy contracted while health spending continued to grow. The nation spent $2.5 trillion on health care in 2009, for an average of $8,086 a person, and the recession had a profound influence…”
- U.S. health-care expenditures up only 4 percent in 2009, suggesting effects of recession, By Amy Goldstein, January 5, 2011, Washington Post: “The nation’s expenditures on health care in 2009 grew by 4 percent, the smallest increase in at least a half-century, according to new federal figures that suggest Americans stinted on medical services as they lost jobs and insurance in the recent recession. Although health insurance premiums rose slightly faster than they did a year earlier, overall spending on private health insurance decelerated as the number of people with such coverage fell by 6.3 million. And the out-of-pocket amount Americans spent on health care barely increased, the figures show. On the other hand, spending on Medicaid soared – by 9 percent, compared with less than 5 percent in 2008 – as more people qualified for the public insurance program for the poor…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty