More Americans have access to health care today, but cost and quality vary widely from state to state. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, state health costs depend on a number of factors, ranging from federal legislation to the overall health of residents to the number of “public charges” such as prisoners and recipients of social assistance. And often, policy makers have no hand in determining or swaying the amounts that residents shell out for health expenditures.
How does Texas Compare?
Health Care in Texas (1=Best; 25=Avg.): (Info via WalletHub)
- 23rd – Average Monthly Insurance Premium
- 27th – Number of Hospital Beds per Capita
- 42nd – Number of Physicians per Capita
- 28th – Number of Dentists per Capita
- 43rd – Physician Medicare Acceptance Rate
- 51st – % of Adults Aged 18 to 64 with Health Insurance
- 50th – % of Children Aged 0 to 17 with Health Insurance
- 16th – % of At-Risk Adults Without a Routine Doctor Visit in Past Two Years
- 47th – % of Adults Without a Dental Visit in Past Year
- 5th – % of Medical Residents Retained
For every American, that amount is about $9,523 annually and expected to rise in the coming years, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In 2014, health spending accounted for 17.5 percent of national GDP. By 2025, that figure will increase by an estimated 2.6 percent. An international comparison of health expenses reveals that Americans even pay the highest for certain prescription drugs and some common medical procedures compared with patients in other wealthy countries.
But higher costs don’t necessarily translate to better care and treatment here at home. The Kaiser Family Foundation found in its latest analysis of global health care quality that the U.S. remains outperformed by several of its peers “on a large number of measures,” despite improved performance in others. In particular, the U.S. lags in “life expectancy at birth; cost-related barriers to health care access; the prevalence of retained surgical items or unretrieved device fragments; and burden of disease, which takes into account years of life lost due to premature death and years of life lost to poor health or disability.”
