Healthcare: Recommended Reading: CG Publications: Fact Sheets: Selected Healthcare Cost Data

Selected Healthcare Cost Data

• National health expenditures are projected to reach $3.6 trillion in 2014, growing at an average annual rate of 7.1% between 2003-2014. By 2014, health care costs will be approximately 18.7% of GDP, up from 15.3% in 2003.
  • Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, National Health Care Expenditures Projections: 2004-2014.

• The total cost of compensation through the legal system--including court fees, attorney's fees, the time of parties involved, and compensation costs--currently amounts to less than two percent of all health care expenditures.
  • Source: CBO. 2004. Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice. Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office.

• A single preventable adverse drug event in a teaching hospital has been estimated to cost over $4,000.
  
  • Source: Leape, Lucian L. "Can We Make Health Care Safe? Reducing medical errors and improving patient safety: Success stories from the front lines of medicine," Accelerating Change Today (A.C.T.), 2000: 2.

• Over half of Arkansas physicians have had to reduce or discontinue one or more medical services in the last two years due to increasing medical liability premiums, according to the Arkansas Medical Society.
• In the past three years, Kentucky has lost 36% of its practicing neurosurgeons, 29% of its general surgeons and 25% of its obstetricians, according to the Kentucky Medical Association.
• In Oregon, 43.4% of neurosurgeons, 27.1% of orthopedic surgeons, and 23.5% of Ob-Gyns reported in 2003 that they had already stopped providing certain services, or were planning to do so.
  • Source: American Medical Association, "Medical Liability Reform NOW!--A compendium of facts supporting medical liability reform and debunking arguments against reform," June 14, 2005.

• Over 18% of ob/gyns have abandoned obstetrics in Pennsylvania--while nearly 20% have in West Virginia.
  • Source: Insurance Information Institute, "Medical Malpractice Insurance," June 2003, p. 2 (citing a January 2003 statistic from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists).

• From 2000-2002, neurosurgeons experienced an increase of 63% in the cost of their malpractice insurance premiums. The surveyed neurosurgeons stated that 43% plan to or are considering restricting their practice.
  • Source: Insurance Information Institute, "Medical Malpractice Insurance," June 2003, p. 4 (citing a survey from the Council of State Neurosurgical Societies).

• In the immediate years preceding 2003, more than 95% of emergency medicine physicians experienced insurance premium increases, with approximately 69% facing increases between 60 to 500 percent.
  • Alliance of Specialty Medicine, "ASM Statement Before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee on the Subject of 'Current Issues Related to Medical Liability Reform,'" February 2005, p. 11.

• 78% of Americans fear that the increasing costs of medical liability could limit their access to care.
  • Source: Roberts, Richard, "Understanding the Physician Liability Insurance Crisis," Family Practice Management, Oct. 2002 (citing an April 2002 Wirthlin Worldwide Study commissioned for the Health Care Liability Alliance).

• Tort costs add $3,000 to the cost of a heart pacemaker.
  • Insurance Information Institute, "Tort Excess 2004: The Necessity for Reform from a Policy, Legal and Risk Management Perspective," 2004, p. 8.

• Malpractice premium rates for internists, general surgeons, and obstetrician/gynecologists increased 25 percent, 25 percent, and 20 percent, respectively, in 2002.
  • Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Addressing the New Health Care Crisis: Reforming the Medical Litigation System to Improve the Quality of Health Care," prepared by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, March 3, 2003.

• Doctors spent $6.3 billion in 2002 to obtain malpractice liability insurance coverage.
  • Source: "Confronting the New Health Care Crisis: Improving Health Care Quality and Lowering Costs by Fixing Our Medical Liability System," prepared by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, July 24, 2002.