Given the wide gap between average spending for chronic conditions and the average employee, understanding and managing such costs is a vital part of improving the U.S. health care system. (Photo: Shutterstock)
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) study puts new numbers on the old axiom that a relatively small amount of people account for a high percentage of health care spending. The KFF analysis focused on health care costs for people enrolled in employer-based plans of large companies over a three-year period; from 2015 to 2018.
For people in these large employer plans, 1.3 percent of enrollees accounted for 19.5 percent of overall health spending in 2017, the study found. The report said that people in the top five percent of spending in each of the three years from 2015 to 2017 had average health spending of $87,870 in 2017. That compared to average per-person spending of $5,870 among all large group enrollees during that period.
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