Health Care Cost and Access Challenges Persist Across the Country

Little has changed in local health care markets since 2005 to break the cycle of rising costs, declining insurance coverage and widening access inequities, according to initial findings from HSC's 2007 site visits to 12 nationally representative metropolitan communities. Two years ago, HSC researchers identified several troubling trends warning of growing cost and access problems, including a hospital building boom; intense competition among hospitals and physicians to expand profitable specialty services; growing stress on community safety nets; and few cost-control strategies on the part of employers and health plans. For the most part, those trends continued into 2007, although employers and health plans have stepped up efforts to engage consumers and the hospital building boom appears to have abated somewhat.

Issue Brief No. 114