Articles

Health costs projected to reach one-fifth of GDP

Public Agenda Alert
Feb. 23, 2006

A new federal report projects that by 2015, the United States will be spending one in every five dollars on health care. While health care spending isn't rising as fast as a few years ago, costs are still outstripping the overall growth in the economy. Health care already accounted for 16 percent of gross domestic product in
2004.

Americans view a number of health care issues as very important, but if asked to choose they are most likely to say cost and availability of health insurance are the most important. About two-thirds go so far as to say the government should guarantee health insurance for every American. Yet support for a health plan covering all Americans and financed by taxpayers can vary depending on question wording -- a typical warning sign that views on this issue may be unstable.

Americans do say they favor a broad range of proposals for expanding health insurance coverage, especially tax incentives for businesses. They also give mixed signals on whether they would favor increasing taxes to help cover the uninsured. Very large majorities say they support proposals that could mean an increase in their taxes, such as expanding Medicaid and Medicare. Yet, half say they would not be willing to pay either higher taxes or higher insurance premiums to cover more of the uninsured.

Read more in our Red Flags on Health Care:
http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/
red_flags.cfm?issue_type=healthcare

Read the report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/apps/media/
press/release.asp?Counter=1787

Read the Reuters story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060222/
pl_nm/economy_healthcare_dc

Copyright 2006 Public Agenda.

About Public Agenda

Public Agenda is a nonpartisan opinion research organization helping Americans explore and understand critical issues since 1975. For more information about Public Agenda, visit http://www.publicagenda.org.

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