FSA Friday - 2/22/19 - American health care is #1 … for the wrong reasons

FSA Friday - American Health Care Is #1 … for the Wrong Reasons

It's not exactly "breaking news" -- United States citizens spend more on health care than residents of ANY other country. And sadly, this trend isn't showing any signs of slowing, with health care costs rapidly approaching 20% of our overall national spending.

Would you hand over one out of every five dollars in your pocket for anything else? Probably not, but that's exactly what U.S. citizens are doing right now -- and what they'll likely continue to do for the next decade or more.

Health care spending in America to consume 1 in 5 U.S. dollars - Aimee Picchi, CBS News

In this brief, but eye-opening piece from CBS News, we learn that the steady growth of U.S. health spending is projecting to be nearly 20% of all spending by 2027. And it seems like it's because the health care we're paying for is working! Baby boomers are living longer, requiring more medical treatment as they continue to age.

Because of this, the same forecasts predict Medicare spending will be the biggest chunk of this projected growth, rising 7.6% each year until 2027.

We might not be economics experts, but we do know that the 5.5% average growth of health care spending year-over-year exceeds the overall growth in national spending by nearly a full percentage point, widening a gap that many experts still can't get their heads around. The next article tries to decipher it for us...

How Americans spend much more on health care than they realize - Philip Moeller, PBS

This short piece from PBS wastes no time getting to the point -- U.S. households spent $980 billion on health care in 2017, which works out to more than $3,200 per person, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' annual report on health spending.

As it turns out, consumers are only directly paying for a third of that total. Don't get too excited, though, since we're indirectly covering the remainder through federal and state taxes, premiums and other fees. And even though it seems like employers are footing most of the bill for worker health care benefits, when good insurance comes at the expense of higher paychecks, it's still coming out of employee pockets at the end of the day.

Thankfully, the article and report clearly detail where your dollars are going, so you have a better idea of what those paycheck deductions really mean as national health care spending continues to grow. Transparency is key -- we may not ever get used to handing over 20% of our own money just to handle health costs, but we certainly deserve to know why.

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FSA Friday is a weekly roundup of the latest topics, tips and headlines to keep you updated on all things flex spending. It appears every Friday, exclusively on the exclusively on the FSAstore.com Learning Center. And for the latest info about your health and financial wellness, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.


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