The cost of Health Care

2 c) The cost of Health Care

What country spends the most on healthcare?

By Investopedia AAA |

The United States currently ranks highest in health care spending. Of the countries spending the most on health care, the U.S. spent a staggering $8,508 per capita. Norway had the second-highest health care budget, with expenditures at $5,699 per capita. This information comes from data released by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2013.

This year my Social Security payment went up by a few dollars, but the amount deducted for my portion of the Medicare premium plus the added premium for my supplemental care (items not covered by Medicare) was 4 times (4X) my pay increase.

In our country the increased cost of our health care has outpaced the  rate of inflation by a considerable amount. Since 1963 the overall CPI has increased by an average of 4.07%.

By comparison, the average rate of inflation for health care, over the same time frame has risen by at more than double the average increase for the CPI.

When considering buying power the cost for many items is actually decreasing over time, but the same is not true for health care as the following documents:

The Cost of Health Care: 1958 vs. 2012

Mark Perry has posted some interesting comparisons of how prices have plummeted between 1958 and 2012 when measured in terms of the hours of work required to purchase items. He concludes that today’s consumer working at the average wage of $19.19 would only have to work 26.6 hours (a little more than three days) to earn enough income ($511) to purchase a toaster, TV and iPod.  The equivalent products (in terms of their basic function, not their quality) would have required 4.64 weeks of work in 1958. In short, the “time cost” of these items has massively declined by 86% in less than 5 decades.

Stay tuned, more to follow on this topic