Health care costs [Infographic]

In spite of all of the commotion about employers passing more out-of-pocket costs on to health plan enrollees, the enrollees’ insurance-related out-of-pocket costs held steady as a share of overall health spending.

2. Prices of health care goods and services rose, but actual use of the goods and services fell.

Inpatient hospital care prices rose 6.7 percent, and the cost of outpatient services increased 6.4 percent. The price of brand name prescription drugs jumped more than 21 percent.

But patients weren’t actually paying those prices, at least all that often. Outpatient utilization fell a little, inpatient admissions fell a little more, and (all the hype about liver pills aside) use of brand-name drugs sank like a rock. 

3. PPACA helped young women hold down out-of-pocket spending.

One major PPACA change was already in effect in 2013: A provision that requires most non-grandfathered, PPACA-compliant individual medical policies and group plans to pay for birth control products without imposing any out-of-pocket charges on the patients.

Partly because of that provision, which was created by a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) PPACA preventive service package implementation regulation, out-of-pocket spending by women ages 19 to 25 held steady at $662.

Although insurance-related out-of-pocket spending held steady, overall out-of-pocket on all kinds of health-related goods and services increased about 4 percent, to $800 per person.