Zakaria: 5% of U.S. patients account for 50% of health care costs

[Playinghardball]

I heard about this the other day on the Ed Schultz Show

New Jersey’s Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers founder and family medicine practitioner, Jeffrey Brenner, used medical billing records to find that just 1% of patients accounted for 30% of health care costs in Camden. And that's not all he discovered in the city's three hospitals. He says: "We learned that someone went 113 times in one year. Someone went 324 times in five years. In similar workup in Trenton, they found someone who went 450 times in one year." These were people with complicated medical histories and chronic illnesses. One patient alone racked up $3.5 million in medical bills over a five year period. As Brenner says, :"They're the difficult patients to treat, and no one is being paid and incentivized to pay attention to them."

What's more, Camden's problem is America's problem. Just 5% of Americans accounted for half of our nation's health care costs in 2009. This is perhaps the crucial statistic to understand about America's health care problem.

So what should be done? I explore this in depth in Global Lessons: The GPS Road Map for Saving Health Care, which will debut on Sunday, March 18 at 8:00pm and 11:00pm ET & PT on CNN/U.S. it will air on CNN International on Saturday, March 24 at 9:00pm ET. My companion article for TIME will be in the edition that hits newsstands on Friday, March 17.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/15/zakaria-5-of-u-s-patients-account-for-50-of-health-care-costs/

[HiPointDem]

1. the most cost-effective thing to do: identify & kill them. (sarcasm, for the impaired)

[woo me with science]

7. [phone]

I bet a lot of them are old and suck up Social Security money, too.

[leftstreet]

13. +1 LOL

[marmar]

2. How much did Health "Care" Industry overhead costs account for?

Or did they not bother with that little factoid in this report?

[lumberjack_jeff]

3. What should be done?

Death panels, of course.

Failing that, recognize that some people have chronic health problems.

[JaneyVee]

4. That is a mind-boggling number.

[NoOneMan]

5. Universal perpetual-life is an expensive idea in practice

Many primitive tribes, while communal in nature, do not practice this. Are they immoral?

[geardaddy]

6. Blah, blah, Zakaria, blah

Right wing hack.

[treestar]

8. Why does anything have to be done?

Some people indeed do have chronic long term illnesses. The rest of us are lucky.

[MineralMan]

9. Oh, yeah...the really sick ones.

Old, too. Why would that be any surprise to anyone? Then, there are the kids who get terrible cancers, or are born with super-expensive problems. You also have to count people who are severely injured, either in wartime or in accidents, fires, etc. Since we're supposed to be a civilized country, we all chip in to help them to either get better or to have the best possible quality of life.

I don't know. Seems like a really good idea to me, somehow. How about you all? Doesn't it sound like a good idea to you, too.

[bemildred]

10. Not only that, half our costs are spent on dying people.

I.e. the ones that need it.

[Bucky]

11. WE'RE NUMBER ONE!! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!

[font size="4"]U[/font]!! [font size="4"]S[/font]!! [font size="4"]A[/font]!! . [font size="4"]U[/font]!! [font size="4"]S[/font]!! [font size="4"]A[/font]!!

[frazzled]

12. A very misleading fact, if you read it only on its face

Of course those people who suddenly have quadruple bypass surgery, or need 12 operations after an accident, or who had a major stroke like Senator Mark Kirk that's required a year of rehabilitation, or who have cancer, or who are in need of full-time skilled nursing at the end of their lives, are going to cost the bulk of the money in a system.

But it's not the SAME 5% of people year after year. High-cost medical care is probably going to affect 5% of the population at any given time. I read the (remarkable) story in the NYT today about the little girl dying of leukemia who had a new, experimental gene-transfer therapy as a last resort in Philadelphia, and is now completely cancer-free! Yay! But I bet it cost a ton. 95% of kids never need that kind of treatment, and this girl will not necessarily have high costs for the rest of her life, if the cancer stays in remission.

It makes total sense to me that a certain small percentage of patients are going to eat up a ton of costs at any given point, but this population of people is going to be changing constantly.

[Enrique]

14. yes, a misleading way to discuss this

I wonder where Fareed will be going with this, he's off to a dishonest start.

[HiPointDem]

15. +1

[DCBob]

18. regardless its still a troubling fact.

If such a small group eats up 1/2 costs each year then thats a problem. Perhaps there should be a limit on each person per year so that person uses more discretion about going to the doctor too frquently. I know that sounds harsh but if that helps the program survive then perhaps it needs to be done.

[SoCalDem]

16. I'll venture a guess

I'd bet that MOST of these people are either very old, or are severely handicapped. Many probably have family who COULD care for them at home, IF they had a reasonable stipend and did not have to have these frail people treated in a hospital.

The frailest of us are often reliant on professional care, and many cannot afford it. Many/Most parents/children/caretakers could be trained to do for these people and might be willing to do it if they did not have to hold down 2 or 3 jobs to keep a roof over their heads.

Having lots of free clinics for poor people is always a good idea too, since the ER is often the healthcare of choice for poor people since they have no money for regular prophylactic care.

[KamaAina]

17. 450 times in one year?

Revolving door? (A provision in the ACA is designed to comabt this.)

Or insurance fraud?

[ProSense]

19. "Just 5% of Americans"?

"Just 5% of 16 million Americans accounted for half of our nation's health care costs in 2009."

I'm not getting the point. Is he shocked that there are really sick people?

The goal is to reduce the cost from 50 percent of 17 percent of GDP to 50 percent of 10 percent of GDP.

Better yet, reducing the cost and funding preventive care will reduce the cost even more.

Explore that!