| In the past 15 years, the health-care economy has pumped out
4.5 million new jobs, including related fields such as drug
development and health insurance. A dozen of the 30
fastest-growing occupations are related to health care. Even
last month, as the unemployment rate took its biggest jump in
22 years, health care added thousands of jobs.
No other industry matches this rapid growth spurt.
Globalization has closed factories. New technologies have
shrunk retail and agriculture operations. Few jobs have been
created in the finance and insurance industry recently, except
in health and real estate. And then the housing bubble burst.
The health-care economy is only bound to grow larger. The
aging baby boomer population is about to spur a new wave of
health-care needs. Advances in technology are improving the
survival rate of terminally ill and injured patients, who need
extended therapy and care.
The health-care economy now employs about 16.5 million
Americans. In the past three decades, the total national
spending on health care has more than doubled to 16 percent of
the gross domestic product. The Congressional Budget Office
forecasts that by 2082, rising health-care costs will push
that spending to nearly 50 percent.
Today, the Senate Finance Committee will host a daylong
summit on health care, meant to help prepare legislators to
wrestle with how they might approach reforming it.
More jobs in older cities
Clearly, health care comes at a steep cost to the public
and individuals.
At the same time, it has brought economic benefits, such as
creating a second life for older manufacturing cities.
Manufacturing, as a percentage of the GDP, has been cut in
half in the past 30 years.
The auto industry has been steadily shrinking in greater
Detroit, for example, shedding tens of thousands of car
manufacturing jobs in the past decade. Ford plans to cut
white-collar salary costs 15 percent by August, laying off an
unspecified number of people.
Meanwhile, the Henry Ford Health System plans to open a
$350 million community hospital next year that will employ
1,600 new hires.
Health care dominates in cities such as Pittsburgh and
Memphis, said Gerard Anderson, a Johns Hopkins professor who
specializes in health-care economics.
"Health care is either the largest or second-largest
producer of jobs and good works for that community," he
said. "Often, the nicest building in the city is the
hospital."
By 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts
health-care employment to double the projected growth of all
other industries combined.
"It's one of those industries that doesn't seem to be
affected by economic downturn," said Terry Schau, an
economist at the bureau. "People get sick, and they're
going to need health care."
Yet this rampant growth comes with a hefty price tag. Last
year the United States spent about $7,600 per person on health
care, the National Coalition on Health Care said.
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