The pharmaceutical segment, which still accounts for a significant portion of our spending, has mostly recovered from the huge spike from expensive specialty drugs to treat Hepatitis C and is steadying. Meanwhile, trends like retail healthcare and high-performing narrow networks are too young to gauge their impact on the country’s healthcare spend. The report winds up focusing on those latter two—the new freestanding outpatient centers (or “access points,” in industry parlance) may influence additional utilization, which could cause costs to increase.
