Health insurers may be interested to learn that their customers are actually spending far more on their own health care costs than the government traditionally reports.
A newly released
When placed into context of how consumers typically allocate their discretionary expenditures, Deloitte finds that they’re spending 19.9% of their money on health care (up from 16.2%, according to government reports), compared to 18.8% on housing and utility costs.
More than half of the spending (55%) in these ancillary areas was for the estimated value of supervisory care, or care given by unpaid relatives and friends, the study finds. Supplemental expenditures included complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners (8%) and products (1%); functional foods and other nutritional products, vitamin and mineral supplements (15%); health publications (1%); ambulance services (3%); other ambulatory care, such as blood banks, some health promotion programs (6%); mental health services (8%); homes for the elderly (4%) and weight loss facilities (1%).
"It has been one year since the passage of health care reform, and our report sheds new light on the hidden costs of health care, and how these costs can add up significantly to billions of dollars and can even eclipse housing as a household expense," Paul Keckley, Ph.D., executive director, Deloitte Center for Health Solutions says. "Our study explores the financial context for the decisions consumers—not simply patients—make about how they spend their money on health care, which will only increase in importance as health care reform continues to take hold."
Deloitte goes on to highlight numerous other findings:
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"The ability of the U.S. economy to recover will be affected in part by how much consumers have in their pockets to spend," Andrew Freeman, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, says. "This reveals a tremendous burden on the average consumer."
For more information on the Deloitte Report,