Health Spending Exceeded Record $2 Trillion in 2006

[flashl]

National health spending soared above $2 trillion for the first time in 2006 and has nearly doubled in the last decade, amounting to an average of $7,000 a person, the government reported on Monday.

With the advent of a prescription drug benefit in 2006, Medicare spending grew at its fastest pace since 1981, the report said.

Private health insurance spending grew at the slowest rate since 1997, and spending on Medicaid, which covers low-income people, declined for the first time since creation of the program in 1965.

...

Introducing the Medicare drug benefit for older Americans and people with disabilities caused changes that rippled through the entire health care sector.

Aaron C. Catlin, an economist at the Health and Human Services Department, said the “deceleration in employer payments for private health insurance” resulted, in part, from the fact that Medicare now subsidized drug costs for many retirees.

Employers lobbied for such subsidies when Congress created the benefit.

NY Times - Read Full Text

We have all time spending on 'health care' and:

Medicare Anti-Fraud Measures are Way Overdue
Feds to enforce tighter restrictions to help prevent Medicare fraud
AG announces record Medicaid fraud recovery
Blatant Medicare fraud costs taxpayers billions
AG: $600M in Medicare fraud prosecutions just a start
Study shows black Americans still receive inferior cancer treatment

Maggie Mahar's book - Money Driven Medicine provides some insight:

the American health care cost spiral comes from suppliers and their entrepreneurial abilities to market expensive and highly specialized services of dubious medical efficacy. Medical care starts off as ambiguous in value and hard to measure in quality. Customers are cowed by doctors and other family members into accepting or even demanding what is offered to them. Third-party payments make the problem worse, and government intervention has stoked rather than checked the basic dynamic. You end up with massive expenses, lots of stupidity, and — because of its expense — radically incomplete coverage. Every now and then the extra services do pay off, but not frequently enough to boost American stats on health care quality.

The American public are treated as valueless objects in a 'health care' industry that put forward the notion that just because dollars are exchanging hands, services are rendered.

With the introduction of medical FICO scores and venture capitalist joining in the ‘health care’ financial dynamics, the game will be about the 'survival of the fittest'. Who will be left standing?