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Dayton Business Journal...
Report: Health care
spending to top $4.6 trillion
by Laura Englehart, DBJ Staff Reporter
Thursday, July 28, 2011
National health care spending is expected to top $4.6 trillion in 2020
and account for $1 of every $5 in the economy, a recent report shows.
Though health care spending grew only 3.8 percent from 2009 to 2010,
thanks in part to the economy, it likely will increase an average 5.8
percent annually through 2020 with the President Barack Obama
administration’s Affordable Care Act.
In 2011, it is estimated $2.7 million will be spent on health care, or
$8,650 per capita. That amount will increase to $13,710 a person by
2020, according to Health Affairs, a journal of health policy thought
and research.
Health care spending is expected to increase only 0.1 percent more than
estimates that do not include the health care overhaul, though nearly
30 million people could receive insurance who otherwise would not,
according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Office of
the Actuary.
The rise in health care spending likely will trickle, or flow, into the
Dayton area.
The health care and biotech industries represent a large part of the
region, which is home to at least 14 biotech companies, including
several pharmaceutical firms. The biotech industry provides 43,000
local jobs and $14.5 billion in annual economic output.
In Ohio, voters will decide Nov. 8 whether to pass a state
constitutional amendment blocking a key aspect of the health care
reform law. It would stipulate that persons, employers and health care
providers do not have to participate in a health care system. That
includes the mandated purchase of health insurance as prescribed by the
Affordable Care Act that President Barack Obama signed into law last
year.
Regardless of what happens, there are many large companies that have a
big stake in whether the law is repealed, changed or kept as was passed.
UnitedHealthcare parent UnitedHealth Group Inc. — which has a regional
headquarters in West Chester that serves both Dayton and Cincinnati —
and Anthem parent WellPoint Inc. are among those that have already
started implementing some aspects of the reform. Other health insurers
such as CIGNA , Aetna and Humana also have customers in the Dayton area
and could be impacted.
Any negative impact on large companies in the pharmaceutical and health
care industry could hit the Dayton region hard.
Drug makers Johnson & Johnson , GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca ,
have hundreds of employees throughout the Dayton region and thousands
throughout the rest of the state. Bayer AG and Abbott Laboratories both
have operations in Ohio.
Click here for the full Health Affairs report.
Read it with Links at Dayton Business Journal
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