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WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's bill for health care has risen to a record $1.2 trillion, with prescription drugs accounting for nearly 10 percent of the costs and expected to grab an even larger share of what Americans pay to get or stay healthy, government estimates show.
Overall health care spending will more than double to $2.6 trillion by 2010, in part because drug costs are projected to rise on average 12.6 percent every year, federal health economists said in an annual report being published Monday.
The drug spending boom - $99.6 billion in 1999, the latest year for which figures were available - comes not only with an aging population, but as more patients ask for newer, high-priced drugs marketed to them on television and take drug treatments at home for conditions that once landed them in hospitals instead, the report said.
Those trends could slow amid an economic slowdown, when some employers and insurers could pass the growing costs onto consumers accustomed to low co-payments and other fees, said economists at the Health Care Financing Administration, which runs Medicare.
``They are going to be trade-offs,'' Katharine Levit, a lead economist on the spending report, said in an interview. ``It puts increased pressure on all of us - the government, employers, providers - to somehow make choices in terms of how we spend our money.''
Consumer advocates warn that patients who need prescription drugs will pay in other ways if they do not get increased access to lower-cost generic drugs, expansive drug coverage policies and lower premiums.
``The personal cost is very real and very dramatic,'' said Gail Shearer, who handles health cost issues for the Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. ``Children won't be getting the medicines they need to make them better. People of every age group will be suffering or they will have to neglect other basic needs.''
The government publishes the health care spending forecasts in the journal Health Affairs, projecting expenditures on health care by patients, their insurance plans and government programs.
Close to 90 percent of that is considered personal health care spending - expenses that generally include doctors' visits, hospitals stays, medicines and other medical services.
The overall total for health care spending factors in things such as hospital construction costs.
In 1999, prescription drugs accounted for 9.4 percent of personal health spending; by 2010, prescription drugs' share will be 16 cents on the dollar - outpacing other services like nursing homes and home-based health care, the report said.
Prescription drugs also cut into Americans' out-of-pocket costs, expenses not offset by a private or government insurer. People spent $34.9 billion on drugs, compared with $12.6 billion for hospital care and $30.7 billion for doctor or clinic visits, the report said.
The estimates have implications for the government as well.
The projected drug cost total for 2010 - $366 billion - does not take into account what could be spent on medicines if they were fully covered under the Medicare program.
Adding prescription drug benefits to Medicare is a leading issue in Congress this year. President Bush and Senate lawmakers have competing plans on the table.
Observers say the forecasts only prove that Congress cannot leave Medicare participants - 39 million elderly and disabled Americans - unable to pay for valuable medicines.
``As Congress looks at designing a Medicare prescription drug
benefit, it's crucial that they look at reining in costs so that
it's beneficial for the government and consumers,'' Shearer said.
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