AHRQ Has New Data About Cost of Health Care

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Monday, July 10, 2000

Contact AHRQ Public Affairs: 301/594-1364
Karen Carp, 301/594-0313 [email protected] Karen Migdail, 301/594-6120 [email protected]

AHRQ HAS NEW DATA ABOUT COST OF HEALTH CARE

In 1996, about $554 billion in payments were made for health care services and supplies used by the U.S. population not in the military or living in institutions. The average cost per person who had medical expenses was about $2,400. However, half of these people had medical expenses of less than $559. The charts below and on the reverse show that only small proportions of the population had expenses for inpatient hospital (6.8%) and home health services (2.4%), although these health services had the highest average annual expenses ($11,492 for inpatient hospital and $5,191 for home health care).

To view and download a chart on the percent of population with health expense, go to http://www.ahrq.gov/news/press/pr2000/mepschart1.htm on the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) web site. A second chart is available detailing the average expenses per person with expenses at http://www.ahrq.govnews/press/pr2000/mepschart2.htm.

These estimates from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) are lower than those recently released by the Health Care Financing Administration's National Health Accounts (NHA). This is primarily because the MEPS Household Component is focused on the civilian non-institutionalized population and does not collect data on people in the military or living in institutions such as nursing homes or prisons. It also omits costs for program administration and revenues not associated with patient care. When the surveys are adjusted for these and similar differences, the MEPS expenditure estimates are not substantially different from those contained in the NHA.

More information is available from Distribution of Health Care Expenses, 1996 (Publication Number 00-0024) and Per Capita Health Care Expenses, 1996 (Publication Number 00-0026). These publications also are available by calling the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse, 800/358-9295, or from the AHRQ Web site at http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/publicat.htm.

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