High Medical Spending Found In Unexpected Places, Says Study
Quick:聽Where do聽insured Americans spend the most on health care? Miami? Los Angeles?
Nope. It鈥檚 Anderson, Ind., where聽people with employer-provided insurance聽spent an average of $7,231 on medical treatments. That’s according to聽an analysis of, a consulting firm that has one of the biggest databases of insurance claims from employers.
Anderson鈥檚 spending level in 2009 was 76 percent above the national average of $4,104 per person, according to the analysis. Also in the top 10 highest metro areas were:
- Punta Gorda, Fla.
- Racine, Wis.
- Naples-Marco Island, Fla.
- Ocean City, N.J.
- Barnstable Town, Mass.
- Flint, Mich.
- Lake Havasu City-Kingman, Ariz.
- Ocala, Fla.
- Carson City, Nev.
Ogden-Clearfield, Utah was the lowest-spending metropolitan area, with the average privately insured person running up $2,623 in annual spending. Other low spenders were: Dubuque and Sioux City, Iowa; Fayetteville and Fort Smith, Ark.; Laredo and Amarillo, Tex.; Fargo, N.D., and Salt Lake City.
Also in the lowest ten was McAllen, Tex., the for the argument that doctors in some regions are out of control in performing too many tests and procedures. McAllen鈥檚 bad rep is based on its .
But Thomson Reuters鈥 analysis shows that among patients insured through employers, McAllen鈥檚 average spending of $2,950 was 28 percent below the national average. That finding buttresses a separate published last year in Health Affairs that found low health care spending among McAllenites from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas.
The Thomson Reuters analysis doesn’t adjust spending data for geographic variation in prices, health status or other factors, and its database doesn’t cover all employers.
But the results do echo what several have found: 聽It鈥檚 wrong to presume that a region with high Medicare spending also has a cost problem for those with private insurance. For instance, spending on the seniors in Fargo with supplemental insurance from their employers was 13 percent above national average, while spending for adults under 65 was 27 percent below average.
Thomson Reuters found some other complexities. Spending on drugs tended to vary more widely among metropolitan areas聽than did spending on hospitals, doctors and providers. But for the elderly, the reverse was true.
All this illustrates the complexity of efforts to pinpoint excess spending in the health care system and to craft policies that reduce spending without hurting patients. A panel of the Institute of Medicine is and is supposed to make recommendations to the government. The Thomson Reuters study also provides more proof about how little is known about what鈥檚 really going on in private health care markets.
