The National healthcare spending hit a record-high of $3.8 trillion in the US in 2019 – the year before COVID-19 hit the country.
According to an analysis published in Health Affairs, the spending increased by 4.6 percent as compared to 2018 and was mostly driven by personal healthcare spending on hospital care along with other clinical services.
Total spending on clinical services and physicians increased by 4.6 percent to $772.1 billion, whereas retail prescription drug spending increased by 5.7 percent to $369.7 billion.
However, these were all before COVID-19 emerged. Healthcare providers and workers have been battling the pandemic for almost the whole year, and have reported significant changes in expenses and utilization in 2020 due to the pandemic.
There has been a 20 percent decrease in inpatient volume in hospitals and 34 percent in outpatient. This, combined with the rise in costs and other pandemic-related costs, might lead to a loss for hospitals and healthcare across the country amounting to $323 billion.
Overall, experts are predicting that the steady trend of rising healthcare with every year might change this time, but not for too long.
