January/February 1999
Health Affairs
, vol.18, no.1 (January/February 1999): 272
Paul B. Ginsburg
n a letter to the editor, the author questioned assumptions that the
Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) made about future trends in health spending.
HCFA projects that the growth in Medicare spending will lag behind that of private
insurance premiums, with a consequent slowing of cost growth. The author says that this
result is not plausible as a basis for a long-run projection. He believes that a key
factor behind the slowing of premium growth in the mid-1990s was increased competition in
health care markets, and he expects rates of increase of private health insurance premiums
to start spiking up, at least temporarily.
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