Cross-country comparability in well being care value development: 2000-2020 – Healthcare Economist

How did well being care costs change over the previous 2 many years. That’s the query a paper by Papanicolas (2024) goals to reply, evaluating US costs to these from Australia, Canada, France, and the Netherlands between 2000 and 2020.

Earlier than we get to the outcomes, we first want to find out what kinds of value indices are on the market? The authors cite three major sorts:

1. Economic system broad value indices: Examples embody a GDP value index
2. Value indices protecting all items and companies consumed by households: Examples embody the precise particular person consumption (AIC) value index
3. Nationwide well being deflators. These are health-specific costs indices and are produced by a wide range of authorities entities (e.g., within the US Middle for Medicare and Medicaid Providers (CMS), the Bureau of Financial Evaluation (BEA) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) all produce nationwide well being deflators)

The authors argue that economy-wide and AIC deflators do a poor job for capturing modifications in well being care costs.

Though they’re extensively used to deflate well being expenditures for worldwide comparisons, the GDP and AIC value indices seize modifications in costs general—not modifications in healthcare-specific costs. Provided that well being care is commonly offered by non-market producers similar to governments (the place costs could also be imperfect indicators of market worth), healthcare costs are more likely to differ markedly from economy-wide or AIC costs

The info sources the authors used are listed under:

Outcomes:

The well being care spending development fee was highest in Australia (5.7%) and the U.S. (4.9%) and lowest for France (2.7%). Nevertheless, whereas a bigger share off the elevated spending was as a result of value will increase in U.S. (55% of spending development), this determine was a giant decrease for different international locations (48%). Additional:

By trying on the ratio of the consumption-based health-specific index to the consumption-based common value index (AIC) over the research interval, we discover that america reveals the best relative cumulative “extra” development in well being costs over the research interval (14%), adopted by Canada (12%). Australia and the Netherlands additionally exhibit increased cumulative well being value development over the research interval in comparison with common value development, though barely decrease (7%–6%) than the primary cluster of nations. Lastly, France reveals the bottom cumulative value development, with well being costs rising solely barely above common costs (2%).

Within the Determine under, spending development is decomposed into costs and quantity, the place Panel A seems at consumption deflators for public payers and panel B seems at consumption deflators for personal payers. One can clearly see that value development was quicker for well being care bought by public payers in comparison with these bought by households (i.e., out-of-pocket prices or personal insurance coverage).

The complete paper will be learn right here.