Technology & Health Care Spending
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a report on “Technological Change and the Growth of Health Care Spending." The CBO warns that if Medicare spending per beneficiary grows at the rate currently projected, “future budget deficits will rise to levels that could severely jeopardize long-term economic growth unless policymakers sharply reduce other projected spending, substantially increase revenues as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), or do some of both." Since the CBO has determined that about half of all growth in health care spending in the past several decades was associated with changes in medical care associated with advances in technology, future spending growth will depend largely on how the health care system responds to future technological changes.
