What many people struggle to understand is that the cost of health insurance is a function of the cost of and demand for health care.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the total expenditure on health care in America in 1970 was $74.1 billion, while the total expenditure on health care in 2019 was $3.8 trillion — a whopping 51.35 times as expensive. Said differently, health care is 17.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States.

Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.

Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.