I get the Health Behavior News Digest from the Center for the Advancement of Health.
Two adjacent items in today's digest caught my eye.
An Associated Press story: Spending on Health to Rise Dramatically. "By 2017, total health care spending will double to more than $4 trillion a year, accounting for one of every $5 the nation spends, the federal government projects."
And then a Bloomberg story: Cosmetic Surgery Losing Stigma for U.S. Men, Rises 17% in 2007. "American men, favoring Botox injections and liposuction, underwent 17 percent more cosmetic procedures in 2007 to more than 1 million treatments, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery."
Hmmm. Anybody else see a connection between the kinds of trends reflected in the Bloomberg story being a significant piece of the pie that's blowing up in the AP story? Not hard to find: there are connections like this every day in the news.
thanks for citing our digest. there's a growing awareness in Washington, led by CBO director Peter Orszag, that growing costs are driven by increased demands that don't yield any improvement in health status. this is an extreme example of that trend.
Posted by: jim jaffe, cfah at February 26, 2008 02:06 PMI heard this same stat on the news last week and didn't make the correlation. Interesting though, that I can think of 3 male friends that had cosmetic surgery procedures in 2007 and didn't know any prior to that.
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