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September 03, 2014 at 01:24 PM
U.S. spending on health insurance plan administration may boom this year, and spending on dental services and basic health insurance may whisper.
Economists and actuaries in the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have included projections supporting those predictions in a paper published behind a paywall in the Web edition of Health Affairs, an academic journal.
The net cost of private health insurance — or the revenue that the insurers keep after paying claims — could rise about 13 percent this year, to $197 billion. Total spending on private health insurance premiums could increase 6.8 percent, to $1 trillion.
Spending on dental care may inch up 3.1 percent, to $117 billion, and investment in basic health research could creep up just 0.1 percent, to $47 billion. Basic research spending could actually fall 1.7 percent in 2015, to about $46 billion.
Andrea Sisko and the other CMS analysts who worked on the cost projection paper estimate that overall national health expenditures (NHE) are rising 5.6 percent this year, to about $3.1 trillion, or $9,600 per capita. The overall projected rate of growth is up from 3.6 percent in 2013.
