Post Offers Bad News on Health Care, Worse News on Arithmetic

The Friday Post had an article offering the discouraging news from a study from the Centers for Disease Control that baby boomers are suffering from arthritis at a much higher rate than their parents. If this trend continues, it certainly augers poorly for the health of the baby boomers, as well as the cost of sustaining the country's health care system. The Post reports that the CDC projected that the higher than expected rate of arthritis will add $81 billion to the country's annual health care bill: "the $81 billion figure represents three percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), 'a startling figure,' said Louise Murphy, an Atlanta epidemiologist who worked with the CDC on the report." This is indeed startling, most importantly because $81 billion is equal to less than 0.6 percent of the country's GDP (currently almost $14 trillion), not 3 percent as the article claims. Also, the $81 billion is an estimate of the total cost of treating arthritis, not the incremental increase do to the higher than expected incidence. According to the article, the additional cost resulting from the increased incidence of the disease is $16 billion, a bit more than 0.1 percent of GDP. This is not trivial, but it will not break the bank. The U.S. health care system has serious problems, and the population suffers from many serious and preventable health problems, but the Post should make the effort to try to get the story straight. The real news is bad enough.

--Dean Baker