This week’s EconTalk is with Arnold Kling talking about health care [2]. it’s a very nice introduction to the incentives affecting our health care decisions both privately and publicly. One issue that came up is the change in the proportion of health care costs paid out of pocket vs. third party payments. Here are some data, taken from an HHS publication, "Health, United States, 2005" [3]:
[4]
In 1960, 55 cents of every dollar of health care was out-of-pocket. In 2003, it was down to 16 cents.