Well, the world survived the Mayan Apocalypse, so that’s one risk we don’t need to worry about anymore. In case you’re looking for other risk-related reading, Van Mayhall hosted the last Cavalcade of Risk for 2012 this week, so be sure to check it out. One particularly interesting post comes from Jason Shafrin, aka the Healthcare Economist. Jason writes about the factors driving healthcare cost increases, and it may not be what you’d guess. The study he references looked at inpatient costs from 2001 to 2006 (admittedly a bit out of date now, but still relevant and interesting data) and found that the biggest increases were in “supplies and devices”, ICU, and hospital room and board – all three of those areas had double digit percentage increases in costs from 2001 to 2006. I would be very curious to see another column on that chart with 2012 numbers and the corresponding percentage increases… are those three areas still the culprits, or have others (like pharmacy?) surpassed them?
About Louise Norris
Louise Norris has been writing about health insurance and healthcare reform since 2006. In addition to the Colorado Health Insurance Insider, she also writes for healthinsurance.org, medicareresources.org, Verywell, Spark by ADP, and Boost by ADP, and Gusto. Follow on twitter and facebook.