Health spending forecast: 24% rise by year 2000
November 1, 1998 less than 1 minute read
NEWS BRIEFS
Health spending forecast: 24% rise by year 2000
In view of a recent prediction of upwardly mobile health spending, don’t expect your cost-cutting pressures to lift any time soon. Milliman & Robertson, a Seattle-based consulting firm, forecasts that national health expenditures (NHE) will grow from the 1996 level of $1.035 trillion to $1.289 trillion by 2000.
John P. Cookson, a consulting actuary with the company, believes that NHE bottomed out in 1996, and we can look for moderate if uneven increases through the turn of the century. He attributes the upward movement to the delayed effect of the country’s recently robust economic condition. Slightly higher inflation also was a factor.
Still, the report cites no reason to believe that NHE will return to earlier levels, which outstripped the economy’s growth rates — unless the cost containment effect of managed care is only temporary.
However, one factor that could fuel expen ditures might be the current backlash against managed care. Legislative changes resulting from the backlash just might weaken the managed care plans’ ability to impose cost control measures.
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