The US health care sector may be incubating the next big Lehman-style disaster that could tip the economy into a full-blown recession, according to industry analysts.
Forget about the subprime mortgage collapse. The health care sector is nursing its own toxic mess, with soaring debt, the analysts say. “As a nation, we have to step up our game and get on top of it; this is a huge issue,” said Chris Oretis, a former Washington lobbyist who now works as executive vice president in the life insurance secondary markets at GWG Holdings.
As industry spending and debt servicing rage out of control, health care is ranked as the No. 1 US “systemic recession risk” in a new report. The sums at stake are staggering: Spending in the sector accounted for $3.3 trillion in 2015, and is 18 percent of the US economy today. The industry generates 16 percent of private sector jobs nationwide, up from 10 percent in 1990.
US health care spending is forecast to grow by an average 5.6 percent annually in the coming decade, according to a report by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a projection based on no changes out of Washington and in the Affordable Care Care through 2025. Meanwhile, national spending on health care is forecast to outpace US gross domestic product growth by 1.2 percent. CMS has estimated that spending will comprise 19.9 percent of GDP by 2025, up from 17.8 percent in 2015.
“There’s no question that rising health care costs are hurting our overall economy,” said New York-based financial adviser Michael Mondiello. “With consumer spending accounting for some 70 percent of economic activity, the more we spend on health care, the less we have to purchase other things like a vacation or to save for retirement.”
The feeble economic growth elsewhere has failed to keep up with a gargantuan health care debt binge among both individuals and governments, critics said.
Then there’s the boom in mergers, in facility building and in manpower hiring that analysts say could be signs of a speculative bubble that could eventually burst.
“The bigger picture is with the health industry’s ballooning debt and a government that lacks sufficient capital,” said Mondiello. “This [bailout] bill will likely be passed on to consumers, putting us as a country deeper into debt,” added Mondiello, a former CPA in the emerging business sector at Coopers & Lybrand.
The first murmurs of early trouble may have been detected.
“Companies in the health care sector are starting to lay people off,” said John Burns, CEO of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, an independent research and consulting firm on macro trends, such as the health care and technology sectors, that drive the US housing market.
“Health care companies borrowed too much money, and have grown their debt faster than their revenue, so you have to have a pullback.”
Earlier this year, for example, MD Anderson Cancer, Houston’s second-biggest employer, said it was slashing 1,000 jobs amid losses that surpassed $100 million in one quarter alone. Job growth overall in the health care sector is slowing.
In a report published by Burns, health care is identified as the largest systemic risk to the economy, of the three sectors Burns examined, which also included technology and automotive.
The conventional wisdom points to US demographic trends, and an aging population, as supportive of the long-term strength, but the report shows industry growth has surpassed what is sustainable:
- Health care company debt is up 308 percent since 2009.
- The number of hospitals in health systems has expanded by 26 percent since 1999.
- The yearly medical costs for a family of four have jumped 189 percent since 2002, from $9,000 to $26,000.
“It could be like a Lehman Brothers scenario, where a couple of big health care companies take the economy down,” Burns told The Post.