Some Details about the Global Healthcare Spending Slowdown

We are in the midst of a global healthcare slowdown and many of the experts are flummoxed as to its exact cause (see: Everything You Need to Know About the Healthcare Slowdown). Does it lie with the financial crisis? Is it the the result of the co-pays incorporated into most health insurance policies these days? Below is an excerpt from an article on this topic: Healthcare spending is growing slower than the economy for the first time since 1997. And nobody knows why. It might just be the shadow of the Great Recession. Or a move towards more high-deductible plans. Or maybe, just maybe, Obamacare's cost controls. There's evidence for all of them. But...it does matter which is most responsible, because that tells us how long this slowdown might last....The best evidence that Obamacare isn't causing our healthcare slowdown is that it isn't our slowdown. It's the world's slowdown. [H]ealthcare growth rates fell almost everywhere between 2009 and 2011...[This was the time] of a once-in-three-generations (we hope) financial crisis. Take another look at the countries with the least healthcare growth after 2009. It's a who's-who of economies that got obliterated by the crisis: Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Estonia, and Portugal. In other words, it sure seems like the recession must explain a big chunk of this global slowdown.... As former OMB chief Peter Orszag points out, Medicare spending—which shouldn't depend on the state of the econo...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Pathologists Authors: Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Source Type: blogs