New Interactive Tool to Monitor U.S. Health Care Spending

By Claire Thayer, April 8, 2015

A week or so ago, The Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation unveiled a cool new interactive tool for public access to measure quality and cost components of the country's health care system on their new site, The Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker.  “This interactive tool provides up-to-date information on U.S. health spending by federal and local governments, private companies, and individuals. It was developed by analysts at the Kaiser Family Foundation using data from the National Health Expenditure Account and will be updated annually with each data release.”  Using the Health Spending Explorer interactive tool, data can be tracked as far back as 1960, with most recent data as of 2013 (which will be updated annually).  Search by single year, compare two years, or customized you own parameters.  Here are a couple of examples, comparing all types of services and hospital spending by health insurance and out-of-pocket costs in 1993 and twenty years later in 2013.

In addition to the option to use the interactive feature to create your own reports, the “Chart Collections” section has a bunch of charts and supporting slide decks to choose from:

Drilling down to the question of “How do health expenditures vary across the population?” here are a couple of related supporting slides available for download:

In addition to the interactive tool and chart collections, The Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker site provides access to their Insight Briefs and regular blogs.