Basically utilization doesn’t drive cost increases. Branding is and provider market leverage.
That intuitively makes sense when you think about something like prostrate cancers and the all the ads for proton treatment at named place xyz. Regular therapy is expensive at $18k average. Proton runs $38k average.
Care to guess were the demand is?
Diabetes is expensive too, average $80k lifetime charges for someone in their 50s when diagnosed. Add in the percentage of population with diabetes from ’97 to 2013 went from 2.5% to 7.5% and we have a formula for disaster.[/quote] . . . I’ll look at the report from CO that you provided. CO has thin air which can cause enlargement of the heart in sucseptible longtime inhabitants, especially those who live at the higher elevations.[/quote]I reviewed the report and even though two of AK’s main hospitals are “for profit,” I feel that is the only state (of the three in the report) that CO can realistically compare itself to. Part of the healthcare cost problem in CO has to do with proximity to medical care. 5/8 to 2/3 of the state is mountainous and of that portion, the majority of those mtn residents are 25-80 miles from the nearest hospital and up to 375 miles (up to 8-9 hrs drive in the winter and may not be immediately reachable by air) to the nearest trauma center. Most of the small mtn towns only have 0-2 doctors in residence (and one or more of them may be “retired”). If there is a medical emergency in a town which is more than 25 miles from the nearest hospital (on often snowy/icy mtn roads which may be fully or partially closed), then that patient has to be transported by the nearest fire dept or search and rescue vehicle/helicopter to the nearest hospital. “Ambulance” charges can easily be over $2K one way to the nearest hospital just ~25 miles away if the patient cannot be safely transported timely enough by family members or friends. Thousands of (mostly well-heeled) “retirees” from all over the country and world live in these towns. I feel one needs to be in good health to move up there in the first place and also make the decision to “be at peace” with “dying doing what you wanted to do, where you wanted to do it” if you’re hiking or jeeping remotely or even in town when an emergency strikes and you can’t immediately get help. Senior citizens who live up there and develop chronic conditions needing constant medical attention end up having to move to a town (of >15K pop) with a hospital (or even move to a city).
The above (and the likelihood of extreme sports injuries) are reasons why healthplan premiums are very costly in the rocky mtns. I looked into it myself last year and was shocked at CO’s PPO premiums in the rockies, which were $200-$350 month higher than in SD. But CO offers 4-5 different PPO individual plans in that region which is more than double what is offered here.
