Over the last couple years the health care industry has endured a deep economic recession that has included rising numbers of uninsured patients, a decline in doctors鈥� visits and an uncertain future partially obscured by the ongoing overhaul debate in Congress.
But, as reminds us, resilient health businesses have added jobs throughout the recession even as virtually every other sector of the economy聽 by the thousands. In the past two years, even as the economy tanked,聽the health sector added 631,000 jobs, including 22,000 last month, according to the monthly report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manufacturing companies, by contrast, dropped 2.1 million workers since the recession began.聽
There鈥檚 a simple explanation, economists say: When consumers have to choose between buying a new car and getting needed medical treatments, they go to the doctor鈥檚 office, not the Ford dealership.
鈥淚t鈥檚 the one area where people are not willing to make cuts,鈥� said , a former Labor Department economist and Georgetown professor. An aging population has helped fortify the sector against the effects of the recession by deepening the Medicare rolls as baby boomers retire, he said.
The federal government also picked up the tab for more patients to enroll in Medicaid and began聽to subsidize insurance for laid-off workers during the recession, by paying for 65 percent of their COBRA costs. last week from Medicare actuaries concluded that while overall health spending slowed in 2008, total federal spending grew by 10.4 percent that year, compared with only 6.6 percent in the year before the recession began.
One interesting thing to draw from the jobs report: While individual Americans are reluctant to make cuts in their health spending, no matter how rough a recession gets, health care is often the first place Congress looks for savings.聽For instance, 1997鈥檚 sought to take a bite out of the federal deficit by setting targets for Medicare spending on doctors鈥� visits.
In the end, however, Congress overrode many of those budget cuts, which have been fiercely opposed both by the and AARP, an advocacy group聽that includes many Medicare beneficiaries.
鈥淚 think the reason that [health care cuts] are always on the table always is that it鈥檚 a huge trouble to get people to accept them,鈥� said , a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute.