Very Few Are Spending the Most Health Care Dollars
White, elderly, women with private health insurance are spending the most health care dollars, the federal government reported.
$2.6 trillion the nation spent on health care in 2010 translated into just over $8,400 per person.
But that is not the whole story.
A different study just released by a separate federal agency shows that second number doesn’t actually mean very much.
Specifically, in 2009, just 1 percent of the non-institutionalized population accounted for 21.8 percent of all U.S. health spending. And just 5 percent accounted for half the total spending.
Meanwhile, the bottom half of the population accounted for a mere 2.9 percent of total health spending in 2009.
