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Show lion Hindi Fop Mi Cops? SPECIAL TO THE CLIPPER How much are Davis County residents paying per year for health care? How does that compare with what others are paying? BECAUSE OF inflationary pressures, the cost of medical and dental services, hospital care, prescription drugs and the like have gone up sharply in recent years. The direct burden of these costs on the individual pocketbook has been carried, to a large extent, by private health insurance and by such Government programs as Medicare. ALL IN all, according to the latest figures, two-thirds of the bills are now being taken care of in that fashion. Which leaves the one-third that must be footed by the patients pa-tients themselves. These out-of-pocket costs have zoomed recently. DETAILS ON the cost of medical care in the various sections of the country have just been released by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In Davis County's regional area, it appears, out-of-pocket costs in the past fiscal year, excluding premiums paid for health insurance, came to an estimated $179 per capita. ELSEWHERE throughout-; throughout-; the United States the average was $149 per capita. . The figures apply to the population as a whole and include those who had no expenses ex-penses and those who had very large ones. COSTS WERE higher in some parts of the country than in others, were higher for the white population and were higher for those with big incomes. in-comes. For the elderly, as would be expected, the health bill was especially high. Their out-of-pocket expenses averaged $415 per capita, as compared with $117 for those under age 65. A BREAKDOWN of the $149 national average shows $34 of it going to doctors, $25 to dentists, den-tists, $20 to hospitals, $39 for drugs and sundries and $31 for nursing home care and miscellaneous. mis-cellaneous. The total amount spent by Davis County residents in the year, based upon the regional average; was approximately $20,639,000, it is estimated. HEW REPORTS that the overall health bill in the United Unit-ed States reached $104.2 billion, as against $94.2 billion in 1973. |