Dive Brief:
- Healthcare spending on children has grown faster during the past three years than healthcare spending on the general population, a trend driven in large part by an increase in hospital admissions for newborn babies, according to a new study by the Health Care Cost Institute.
- The findings raise questions about the value of the increased spending and how it will impact insurance prices if it continues.
- "We do know that spending is going up every year, we know that spending on kids is going up faster, and this is particularly true for babies," said HCCI researcher Amanda Frost. "We don't know what the impact of this spending is on the population's health, or families or the healthcare system."
Dive Insight:
The findings suggest the need for data in the sensitive area of value in child and newborn healthcare. The HCCI report looks at insurance claims for more than 10 million children who received coverage under job-based health plans.
It finds that from 2010 to 2013, healthcare spending on children increased by an average annual rate of 5.7%, while healthcare spending on everyone up to age 64 increased at an annual average rate of 3.9%. (That still leaves total actual spending on children lower; per capita spending on children landed at $2,574 in 2013, compared to $4,864 for the general population.)
The report notes that the spike in spending on kids comes despite drops in prescription drug use and visits to the emergency room, and despite a shift toward cheaper generic drugs. HCCI attributes the overall increase in spending on children to higher numbers of inpatient admissions and higher prices for those admissions, most notably for newborn babies between 0 and 18 days old who are admitted separately from their mothers.