2% of Total Medicare Spending is Dedicated to Primary Care

This just in:

Only about 2% of total Medicare spending is dedicated to primary care under a narrow definition of the term, a ratio that RAND Corp. researchers found surprisingly low in their analysis.

The researchers used both narrow and broad definitions of primary care in their study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday. Broad primary care made up 4.88% of Medicare spending, compared with 2.12% under the narrow definition. By comparison, primary-care spending averages 7.7% across commercial PPO plans, a 2017 Milbank Memorial Fund study found.

It’s good to know how much the government respects primary care. I know that I have that warm and fuzzy feeling, kind of like drink a hot chocolate in front of a fire on a wintry day.

Somebody hold me.

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