The increasing ratio of elderly
persons to working individuals will contribute to an
increase in the proportion of GNP spent on health care.
Medicare expenditures alone, estimated at 2.0 percent of
GNP in 1990, are projected to increase to 6.8 percent of
GNP in the year 2060.
Between 1977 and 1987, while wages
in most industries grew more slowly than the rate of
inflation, the earnings of health services workers
outgrew the inflation rate.
Health care delivery industries
supplied 16 percent of net new jobs between 1980 and
1990.
As of January 1991, 8.4 million
individuals, or 9.1 percent of total nonagricultural
workers in the private sector, were directly employed in
health services. In many local areas, the proportion of
health care workers is higher. Employment by restaurants,
retail stores, and other nonhealth employers in these
areas would decline considerably if the health sector
were to shrink.
Individual health spending as a
share of adjusted personal income has increased by only
0.9 percentage points since 1965.
Although health care expenditures
are the fastest-rising component of employee
compensation, they are only one component of total
compensation, the measurement that is generally used
to determine productivity and competitiveness. Employer
spending on wages and salaries is a much more significant
component (84 percent) of total compensation than is
employer spending on health care (6 percent).
