http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-healthcost22feb22,0,2473190.story?track=tottextSteep Rise Projected for Health Spending
By Lisa Girion and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
Times Staff Writers
February 22, 2006
WASHINGTON — Healthcare will account for 1 in 5 dollars spent in the United States by 2015, and health savings accounts are unlikely to help much in containing costs, government analysts said Tuesday.
The U.S.' healthcare bill is expected to reach $4 trillion by that year, according to an annual forecast by the National Health Statistics Group at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
At that point, health spending will consume 20% of the country's gross domestic product, up from 16% today, with the government paying about half of the tab, the researchers predicted.
Although the new Medicare drug benefit may help tame the growth of prescription costs, the government economists and actuaries who compiled the forecast said they weren't expecting much from health savings accounts, which the Bush administration has touted as a key means to control spending.<snip>
"I wouldn't argue with their assessment," said Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank and one of the earliest promoters of consumer-driven healthcare. He said federal rules had hamstrung insurance companies' ability to offer the accounts with features that would make them more popular. <snip>