I only read/copied the 1st of 3 pages.
http://healthleadersmedia.com/conten...t-Not-Enough##
The health spending rate is slowing. It has been slowing for a long time in a very incremental way, but we are not able to declare victory here," says the director of PwC's Health Research Institute.
PwC's projections for healthcare cost growth in 2016 provide a mixed review of cost containment.
The good news is that the projected 6.5% increase in healthcare inflation in 2016 is almost half the cost growth of 11.9% in 2007, when PwC first started making its annual projections. The bad news is that 6.5% cost growth is wildly outpacing wage growth and is unsustainable over the long run in a country that already spends close to 18% of its gross domestic product on healthcare.
To put that growth in perspective, the overall rate of inflation in the larger economy over the past year was 0%. "You can see what I would call a little bit of good news, but not enough good news to celebrate yet," Benjamin Isgur, director of PwC's Health Research Institute, said during webcast detailing the findings.
"The health spending rate is slowing. It has been slowing for a long time in a very incremental way, but we are not able to declare victory here. It is one of those things where we are winning a few battles but the overall war of health growth is still there. In fact, when we compare that to our national health expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product, over these last several decades you see a larger and larger part of our economy spent on health services."
That's not necessarily a bad thing, Isgur says.
"Every economy gets to decide what they are going to spend their money on, but as it rises now past 15% of GDP, it does call into question the crowd out effect. Does that mean there are less resources to spend on things like education and transportation? The healthcare growth rate is still rising faster than general economic inflation."
PwC says the key "inflators" for healthcare cost growth in 2016 are expected to include the rising cost of specialty drugs such as Sovaldi, the Hepatitis C therapy from Gilead Sciences; and cybersecurity measures to prevent or mitigate increasingly sophisticated and aggressive large-scale breaches.
Preventive cybersecurity measures are particularly cost effective, PwC says, costing about $8 per patient record, while post-breach measures, including HIPAA fines and customer restitution, can cost about $200 per patient record.
Cost Deflators
The key "deflator" for healthcare cost growth is expected to be the "Cadillac tax" on insurance premiums that will take effect in 2019. To avoid the 40% excise tax, employers are already altering their benefits designs to increase by shifting more of the expense onto employees. The percentage of employers who are only offering high-deductible health plans has grown from 13% in 2012 to 25% in 2015.
"We are starting to see more and more employees share in the cost of their health plans," Isgur says.