{"id":103,"date":"2013-08-23T20:34:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T00:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=103"},"modified":"2013-08-23T20:34:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-24T00:34:00","slug":"health-costs-are-growing-really-slowly-americans-havent-noticed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=103","title":{"rendered":"Health costs are growing really slowly. Americans haven\u2019t noticed."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/08\/20\/health-costs-are-growing-really-slowly-americans-havent-noticed\/\">Health costs are growing really slowly. Americans haven\u2019t noticed.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ask any health economist and they\u2019ll no doubt tell you that health  care cost growth is slowing, growing at a low, unprecedented rate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>They can point to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/01\/07\/the-2-7-trillion-question-are-health-care-costs-really-dropping\/\">National Health Expenditures report,<\/a> which shows health care costs now growing at the same rate as the rest of the economy. Or, they can pull up<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kff.org\/private-insurance\/report\/2013-employer-health-benefits\">&nbsp;new data<\/a>  out Tuesday from the Kaiser Family Foundation, showing that premiums  grew 4 percent in 2013. That\u2019s way lower than growth in the late 1990s  and early 2000s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/files\/2013\/08\/kff2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"kff2\" height=\"423\" src=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/files\/2013\/08\/kff2.png\" width=\"665\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ask any American about what direction health costs are moving, and  you\u2019ll likely get a completely different story. Preliminary results for a  forthcoming Kaiser Family Foundation poll show that most Americans  think that health care costs are actually growing&nbsp;<i>faster&nbsp;<\/i>than usual right now. Fewer than 10 percent say the growth is slowing down.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/files\/2013\/08\/kff1.png\"><br \/><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWe have a very moderate increase this year, but premiums  go up each year,\u201d Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman says.  \u201cPeople see what they pay for their premium going up and perhaps more  forms of cost-sharing. We\u2019ve been seeing a quiet revolution from more  comprehensive coverage to less.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">Altman said that preliminary results from his group\u2019s  survey show that 54 percent of Americans think health care costs are  growing faster than average. \u201cA tiny number said they were growing  slower,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that\u2019s because, if we look at this as a long  term trend, health care costs have increased in excess of wages and  inflation.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/files\/2013\/08\/kff1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"kff1\" height=\"330\" src=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/files\/2013\/08\/kff1.png\" width=\"533\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Health costs are growing really slowly. Americans haven\u2019t noticed. Ask any health economist and they\u2019ll no doubt tell you that health care cost growth is slowing, growing at a low, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=103\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Health costs are growing really slowly. Americans haven\u2019t noticed.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}