Public Health Funding for Disease Prevention Drops by $40B
“Our health care system is dangerously out of balance. We’re spending more and more treating disease, but less and less to prevent it."
By - Per capita health spending has dropped by over $40 billion from 2009 to 2014, confirm researchers David U. Himmelstein, MD, Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), and Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH, a primary care doctor, CUNY Professor, and Harvard Medical School Lecturer, in a recent public health policy brief.
According to their five decades of collected data within a recent peer reviewed study from the American Journal of Public Health, per capita public health spending increased from $39 back in 1960 to $281 in 2008.
If inflation-adjusted public health funding had held steady at 2008’s $281 per capita level, an additional $40.2 billion would have been devoted to public health between 2009 and 2014, claim Himmelstein and Woolhandler. Nonetheless, since 2008, this reported number of $281 has dropped by over 9 percent, they maintain.
In 1960, public health’s share of total health expenditures was reportedly at over 1.3 percent. In 2002, this number topped 3.1 percent before falling to 2.65 percent last year. Himmelstein and Woolhandler expect this number to drop further to 2.4 percent once 2023 hits.
Researchers weigh in on broken ACA promises
States Woolhandler within a press release, “Our health care system is dangerously out of balance. We’re spending more and more treating disease, but less and less to prevent it.”
“We’re breaking the bank paying for hepatitis C and cancer drugs, while drug abuse prevention, needle exchange programs and anti-smoking campaigns are starved for funds,” she says.
“Obamacare was supposed to add $15 billion to public health funding. But in 2012 Congress cut that by $6.25 billion, and sequestration imposed further cuts in 2013,” adds Himmelstein.
“This year, public health will get less than half of the $2 billion promised by the ACA [Affordable Care Act]. And state and local government public health spending has also fallen, even while their other health expenditures have continued to rise,” he adds.
Himmelstein speaks out on the alleged death of the ACA
Himmelstein predicted to RevCycleIntelligence.com in an exclusive interview last June that the ACA will soon lose prominence within the healthcare industry.
“Costs are likely to resume an upward growth pattern and more and more people are going to find themselves grossly underinsured. All of those problems are going to be part of the debate very soon,” stated Himmelstein.
“We are moving to a handful of giant organizations controlling the health delivery system, largely focusing on their own interests and giving lip service to wanting to serve patients, but really acting like corporate masters of the healthcare system and shaping it to do what they want rather than what patients need,” he added.
According to both Himmelstein and Woolhandler’s earlier "shocking" research, one-third of the total healthcare dollar goes to paperwork and bureaucracy. Such numbers, said Himmelstein to RevCycleIntelligence.com, “are likely mere underestimates." A debate about national health insurance is on the healthcare horizon, he stated.
