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Medicare can be counted on to control per enrollee spending growth over time, more than private insurers can.by Cristina Boccuti and Marilyn Moon ABSTRACT: Over the past three decades both Medicare and private insurers have initiated cost containment mechanisms to control the growth of spending on personal health care. To compare spending growth between these two payers, we present four measurement principles that should be implemented when drawing such comparisons, and we apply them to the National Health Accounts data files. We attribute Medicare's ability to equaland using our measures, actually exceed-the private sector in controlling the rate of health spending growth to Medicare's ability to price aggressively for the services it covers.

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