Increasing Burden of Health Care Costs

A grim reality of the U.S. health care system is the significant financial burden for patients (see Figure 1). To better understand this problem, researchers examined survey data on health care expenditures collected over 4 consecutive years from a nationally representative group of 13,000 people. The primary outcome was financial strain, defined as a composite of cost burden (annual out-of-pocket medical spending >10% of family income), catastrophic cost burden (>40% of family income adjusted for basic food expenses), and foregone care due to cost.