While discussions about the costs of health care often focus
on the average amount spent per person, spending on
health services is actually quite skewed. About ten percent
of people account for 63% of spending on health services;
21% of health spending is for only 1% of the population. At
the other end of the spectrum, the one-half of the
population with the lowest health spending accounts for just
over 3% of spending.
4 Kaiser Family Foundation calculations using data from U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Medical Expenditure
Panel Survey (MEPS), 2006. MEPS is a national survey of individual members of
households and their health care providers that produces nationally representative data
on, among other things, health care use and spending. See
http://www.meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/survey_comp/household.jsp
. Estimates of nationalhealth spending obtained from the MEPS differ in several ways from the estimates from
the NHEA, which is the source of data for most of the estimates in this document. The
MEPS provides estimates for the civilian, noninstitutionalized population, which means
that health spending by people in the armed forces or who are institutionalized for long
periods (e.g., nursing home residents) are not included in MEPS estimates but are
included in the NHEA. MEPS and the NHEA also differ in the way that they categorize
certain health expenditures (e.g., hospital-based home health services). See Sing,
Banthin, Selden, Cowan, and Keegan, “Reconciling Medical Expenditure Estimates
from the MEPS and NHEA, 2002,”
Health Care Financing Review, vol. 28, no. 1, Fall2006,
http://www.cms.hhs.gov/HealthCareFinancingReview/.