  
	
  
Health Spending:
Questioning the Assumptions
January/February 1999 
Health Affairs, vol.18, no.1 (January/February 1999): 272 
 Paul B. Ginsburg 
 n a letter to the editor, the author questioned assumptions that the
    Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) made about future trends in health spending.
    HCFA projects that the growth in Medicare spending will lag behind that of private
    insurance premiums, with a consequent slowing of cost growth. The author says that this
    result is not plausible as a basis for a long-run projection. He believes that a key
    factor behind the slowing of premium growth in the mid-1990s was increased competition in
    health care markets, and he expects rates of increase of private health insurance premiums
    to start spiking up, at least temporarily.
 Free access to this article is available at the Health 
  Affairs Web site.  
 |