Spending on health care increased er in New Hampshire than inany other state between 1980 and 1991 according to a study conductedby the federal Health Care Financing Administration. The study waspart of the Clinton administration's Task Force on Health CareReform's effort to collect state-by-state estimates of how much ofAmerica's health care dollar each state and region consumes. Thelast such effort was published in 1985.
'Spending in New Hampshire increased faster (13.4 percentannually) than spending in any other state. High growth in personalincome (second in the nation) and in population 10th in the nation)contributed to this trend,' said the authors of an article on thestudy that appeared in the latest issue of HCFA's quarterly journal,Health Affairs.
Illinois, where increases averaged 8.2 percent annually duringthe study period, experienced the slowest growth in health carespending.
The study estimated state spending in three areas: hospital care,physician services and retail purchase of prescription drugs. Thoseexpenditures account for 70 percent of personal health care spendingand are areas most likely to be covered by Clinton's emerging healthcare reform plan, the authors said.
Regional spending was highest in New England, which paid $2,112per capita for hospital care, doctors services and prescription drugsin 1991. The region with the lowest per capita health care bill,$1,567 in the Rocky Mountain states, spent 35 percent less on healthcare. However, because New England's per capita income was so muchhigher, the regions spent essentially identical shares of theirincome for health care -- 9.3 percent in New England and 9.2 percentin the states of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.
'These statistics suggest that the cost of health care was notnecessarily more burdensome when measured as a share of income inregions with high health costs than in regions with low costs,' theauthors said.
Within New England, New Hamsphire's annual increase led in allthree spending categories. Nationally, New Hampshire easily placedfirst in the increase in spending for physician services, which rosean average of 15.7 percent during the study period. The study didnot, however, take into account patients who crossed state borders toreceive health care, something HCFA plans to address in laterresearch.
Several reasons may have contributed to New England's ranking asNo. 1 and the Mideast region's (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, NewYork, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia) No. 2 ranking.'The two regions had more physicians per capita in 1991 than otherregions -- 18.2 and 18.8 physicians per capita respectively, comparedwith 15.7 physicians per 10,000 natiowide,' the authors said. Bothregions also have a higher percentage of elderly residents who tendto use more health care services.
Higher per capita incomes in the East also made it easier forresidents to spend more on health care. Those spending levels,however, are likely to attract the attention of budget cutters.While the study provides useful insights, the authors said, it'smajor value may lie in helping to 'design policy options to curb costgrowth in the future.'Inventions transport Dartmouth students
The necessity to pass Dartmouth Professor John Collier's entrylevel engineering course has become the mother of four inventionsbeing considered for patents. Collier is so enthusiastic aboutseveral of the inventions that he predicts they will be on the marketwithin two years. These are the best products the 78 young men andwomen who worked in teams of four or five to design inventions thatfocused on the general theme of transportation.
TRAILblades -- a go-anywhere version of in-line roller skates --permit wearers to take to dirt trails and mountain sides and wasjudged by a panel of Thayer School professors as the best inventionto come out of the fall semester.
TRAILblades consist of two seven-inch pneumatic wheels mounted onboots with 20-inch frames. Stopping is achieved by braking theback wheel with a hand-held device that the inventors assertprovides more control than offered by traditional skates.
'The Bike Buddy' allows bicyclists to talk to one another withoutthe use of headphones or transmitters. It consists of a cross-barthat connects two bikes by attaching just beneath the handlebars.The device is cheaper than the traditional tandem bicycle andpresumably eliminates the problems that may occur when the frontbicyclist turns to inquire whether his companion has heard what hesaid.
Stolen bicycles, a common phenomenon now that mid-range bikes run$400 or more, may be located before they are sold if the owner hasinstalled a hidden homing device invented by one Dartmouth team. Thecellular tracking device is designed to be hidden in the bike'stubing or seat post. It will broadcast the bike's approximatelocation within a radius of 5 to 10 miles. With luck, a bicyclethief will not have already installed 'Enable 1' on his vehicle.This invention uses hydraulic power and folding arms that extend toground level to assist bike owners with the daunting task of mountingbicycles on roof-top car carriers quickly and easily.
Still another invention, a modified wheelchair that allows theuser to move easily from the chair to a seated position elsewhere,won the engineering school's Philip R. Jackson Award for the bestinvention to emerge from Engineering Sciences 21.
To make a normally awkward and sometimes dangerous maneuvereasier, the chair's rear wheel slides backwards allowing the user toinstall a transfer board that attaches to the chair's armrest. Theboard can be rotated, tilted or lifted horizontally to accommodateallowing the chair's user to slide across in proper position tosafely move to another seat.
