The Agent's Health Spending Data Survival Kit

Federal workers have updated a must-have tool for health insurance agents and brokers: the latest batch of national health care spending data.

A team at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has stuffed the summary article, and the spreadsheets behind the article, full of health care system revenue and expenditure numbers for 2016.

CMS analysts report here, for example, that overall U.S. health care spending grew 4.3% in 2016, to $3.3 trillion, or $13,348 per person.

Health care spending ate up 17.9% of the United States’ $18.6 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016.

A team led by Micah Hartman has published an easy-to-read, copyrighted version of the data, behind a paywall, on the website of Health Affairs, an academic journal. That version of the data is available here.

The team has also published a collection of data spreadsheets and more technical summaries of the data on the CMS website. That collection of data, which is copyright-free, is available here.

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All of the figures in the article and the spreadsheets are fair game for producers can use.

Producers can:

• Read the data to see for themselves, free from media bias, what’s been happening to the U.S. health care finance and delivery finance systems.

• Put the data marketing presentations, brochures, social media posts, web videos and blog articles.

• Build the data into proposals.

For a look at five especially useful gulps of information from the article, and the spreadsheets, read on.

(Image: Thinkstock)

1. National Health Expenditure Basics

Total GDP (national income):

2015: $18.1 trillion

2016: $18.6 trillion

Change: +2.8%

GDP per capita (in other words: per person):

2015: $56,580

2016: $57,751

Change: +2.1%

Total health expenditures:

2015: $3.2 trillion

2016: $3.3 trillion

Change: +4.3%

Health expenditures per capita:

2015: $9,994

2016: $10,348

Change: +3.5%

2. Total Spending by Coverage Type

Private health insurance:

2015: $1.07 trillion

2016: $1.12 trillion

Change: +5.1%

Medicare:

2015: $648.8 billion

2016: $671.1 billion

Change: +3.6%

Medicaid: 

2015: $544.1 billion

2016: $565.5 billion

Change: +3.9%

3. Per Enrollee Spending by Coverage Type

Private health insurance:

2015: $5,445