Monday, January 20th, 2020
Stephan: Healthcare should be considered a human right, and it should be single-payer and universal. Profit should not be a factor under consideration at all, any more than pubic schools should be run for a profit. Note the difference with the system of the Netherlands.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Private health insurance is a conduit for exploding health care spending, and there’s no end in sight.
The big picture: Most politicians defend this status quo, even though prices are soaring. And as the industry’s top executives and lobbyists gathered this week in San Francisco, some nodded to concerns over affordability — but then went on to tell investors how they plan to keep the money flowing.
Where it stands: More than 160 million Americans get private insurance through an employer or on their own, and per-person spending in that market rose by almost 7% in 2018, the highest annual growth rate in 14 years.
- “Prices are definitely going up,” Owen Tripp, CEO of health tech startup Grand Rounds, told me this week during the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
- His company’s vast amount of commercial health data shows big increases in what companies are spending on hospitals, doctors, specialty drugs, devices and out-of-network services.
What they’re saying: Many in the industry admit price inflation […]
