I am working on a paper on health care spending in the U.S. and I am using a graph of health care as a percentage of total personal consumption. There is a very distinct upward trend from 1930 to the present, however from 1995 to 2003 there is quite a significant decrease in spending. After 2003 the sharp upward trend begins again. I have been looking for some explanation but can not find anything. Anyone have any insight into this?
hmm there was obv a big boom. Why don't you download the specific items in consumer spending and compare which one went up?
PDePeyster: I am working on a paper on health care spending in the U.S. and I am using a graph of health care as a percentage of total personal consumption. There is a very distinct upward trend from 1930 to the present, however from 1995 to 2003 there is quite a significant decrease in spending. After 2003 the sharp upward trend begins again. I have been looking for some explanation but can not find anything. Anyone have any insight into this?
Maybe it has to do with information technology. 1995 seems to be the time when computer systems and networking applications became affordable. There is a lot of administration involved in healthcare and insurance.
Then by 2003 increased bureaucracy and taxation had swallowed these cost-savings?
PDePeyster:There is a very distinct upward trend from 1930 to the present, however from 1995 to 2003 there is quite a significant decrease in spending. After 2003 the sharp upward trend begins again. I have been looking for some explanation but can not find anything.
Try to convert your data to costs in terms of gold. It would be interesting to see if such a graph reveal anything shocking.
If you do and you happened to observe something interesting, please share it.
Jorge boosh thought it would be a good idea for corporations to have more of your money. So he passed this. It was in 2003. It has a lot of zazzy words like "modernization" in the title, but its basically just another wealth transfer. In the costs section you can see this bill is responsible for some ~$50billion/yr in spending.