6 Louisiana cities among nation's 10 most expensive for health care, report says | NOLA.com
Six of the 10 most expensive places to buy health care in the nation are in Louisiana, including Metairie, Baton Rouge and Lafayette.
ThatÂ’s according to a new Institute of Medicine study that attempted to examine geographic differences in health care spending among Medicare, Medicaid, privately insured and uninsured populations.
Monroe, Alexandria, and Shreveport also make the list behind No. 1 ranked Miami and No. 2 ranked McAllen, Texas, based on Medicare spending data.
With Louisiana near the top of many of the country’s “worst of” health lists — asthma, diabetes, heart disease, obesity — it could be tempting to credit this distinction to our state’s particularly unhealthy population.
Jonathan Skinner, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, who has studied variations in health care spending for years, said that Louisiana has several strikes against it, even when studies like this one control for poverty, race and health status.
Besides having an incredibly unhealthy population, he said, individual patient care between hospitals and community clinicians is often fragmented, leading to high percentages of hospital readmissions soon after discharge. Louisiana also has a robust market for what he called “entrepreneurial home health providers” that clearly plays a role.
“To me,” Skinner said of the study, “the spending differences are important, but what worries me more is that this is an indicator of poor care.”