Medical Care Prices

What Are Medical Care Prices?

The prices households pay for medical care, from doctor visits and hospital stays to prescription drugs and health insurance, measured against the prices of everything else they buy, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index. At 100, care has risen exactly as much as all prices since 1982 to 1984; above 100, it has risen more. Monthly since 1947.

Why Does It Matter?

When care outpaces other prices, the same paycheck buys less of it, and the difference arrives as higher premiums, deductibles, and copays, and as raises that go to health insurance instead of wages. From 1947 to 2019 care grew about three times as costly compared with everything else, one reason health care takes a larger share of family budgets and public spending than it once did.

Can Politics Influence It?

Through Medicare and Medicaid, whose payment rates set the price of much of the care they buy and serve as a benchmark for private insurers, and through rules on drug prices, hospitals, and insurers. Much of the price is still set privately, by hospitals, doctors, drug makers, and insurers, and by the pace of new treatments.

Key Idea

The line compares, so it can fall while care grows more expensive: when food, fuel, and rent jump, medical prices that rise more slowly still pull it down, and when a recession drags other prices lower it can rise with no change in what care costs. It tracks prices, not how much care people use or how good that care is.

Scored: A Faster Fall or Slower Rise Ranks Better