Medicare Versus Private Insurance: The Data

To see the table, please click on the link:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/medicare-versus-private-insurance-the-data/

June 12, 2011, 4:52 PM
Medicare Versus Private Insurance: The Data
NHE web data (pdf), Table 13. I deflated both sides by the consumer price index.

Note that the table does both a raw comparison and a comparison of “common benefits”, which takes care of the problem of differential coverage. If you look at the bottom of the table, you’ll see that on both comparisons Medicare payments have grown 1 percentage point more slowly than insurance premiums over the past 40 years.That adds up to a lot.

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Eg. Looking at Common Benefits, the increase from 2002 to 2009 is

4.6 for Medicare
6.7 for private health insurance


I expect the CEO and other executive pay for health insurance companies has ballooned similarly as those for other companies, which would account for at least part of the increased increase for the private companies.


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