Paul pointed out a statistic in an earlier post: "80% of Medicare dollars are spent on persons with five or more chronic conditions." I think he thought this was crazy, and I think he is right. From the Agency for Health Research and Quality:
Expenses for people with one chronic condition were twice as great as for those without any chronic conditions. Spending for those with five or more chronic conditions was about 14 times greater than spending for those without any chronic conditions.14 Persons with five or more conditions also have high hospital expenditures. In New York State during 2002, of the 1.3 million different persons admitted to the hospital, the 27 percent with five or more chronic conditions accounted for 47 percent of all inpatient costs.15
So, the true situation is that people with multiple chronic conditions are much more expensive to care for than others, but they do not account for that great a percent of total Medicare spending.
The down side of writing fast... this was a 'fact' that was sufficiently implausible that I should have confirmed it. Live and learn.
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Posted by: Pandora Jewelry | 03/09/2012 at 10:55 PM