A Health Care Cost Institute report shows that health care spending for Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance increased by 4.6% in 2011, reaching $4,547 per person, driven by higher prices for hospital stays, outpatient care, procedures, and prescriptions. Prices rose fastest for outpatient care, whereas prescription spending slowed, growing by only 1% as patients used fewer brand-name drugs in favor of generic alternatives. The report also reveals that regional spending gaps have widened, with the highest spending in the Northeast and the lowest in the West; that spending on children’s health is increasing faster than that on other age groups; and that use of outpatient and other health care services is growing. Finally, though consumers spent more money on health care, insurer-covered costs also increased, leaving cost sharing between consumers and insurers stable.

A bill to be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives this month by Representative Mike Honda (D-CA), the Healthcare Innovation and Marketplace Technologies Act, would create a new Office of Mobile Health at the FDA to make recommendations on issues regarding health-related applications for mobile devices, as well as a support program at the Department of Health and Human Services to assist app developers in complying with privacy regulations. Though the FDA has begun regulating a few medical apps and has released draft guidance for apps making medical claims, the final regulations have not been released, and some developers worry that the approval process will be too slow. Though another law created a commission to develop a strategy for regulating medical apps, its report is not due until after the FDA is expected to release its final regulation.

A New York Times/CBS poll found that 34% of voters would like to see the Affordable Care Act repealed, 25% would keep most of the law but repeal the individual mandate to obtain health insurance, and only 42% approve of the entire law. Yet 52% of voters trust President Barack Obama to handle health care issues more than they trust Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, whereas only 42% trust Romney more. Some 77% of voters prefer traditional Medicare to premium support, and only 15% expressed the opposite preference, although four fifths of voters believe the Medicare program needs to change to remain financially sound. Fifty-two percent of voters trust Obama more to handle Medicare, as compared with 40% who trust Romney more. The vast majority of voters, 77%, believe abortions should be available, but 35% would like stricter limits, while 45% would like abortion to be generally available and 20% want it prohibited altogether.

According to a new report by Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, all 50 states could have obesity rates above 44% by 2030, if current trajectories continue; 13 of these states would have rates above 60%, and 39 would have rates above 50%. The incidence of obesity-related diseases could increase by a factor of 10 between 2010 and 2020, then double again by 2030. By 2030, medical costs of treating preventable obesity-related diseases could increase by $48 billion to $66 billion per year, and economic productivity losses could amount to $390 billion to $580 billion annually. States could, however, save 6.5 to 7.9% in health care if the average body-mass index in their population were reduced by just 5% by 2030. Report recommendations include new school meal standards, more physical education in schools, support for healthy nutrition in federal food programs, and support for preventive care and obesity-prevention programs.

A  report from the Bipartisan Policy Center outlines various factors driving rising health care costs in the United States. These include fee-for-service payments, a fragmented delivery system, administrative burdens, and laws and regulations affecting health care. Other costs drivers are an aging population, rising rates of chronic disease, lifestyle factors, and improving medical technology. In addition, rising costs are attributed to the effect of a lack of transparency about cost and quality, as well as cultural biases, on consumers’ utilization choices, as well as the tax treatment of health insurance and insurance benefit design. Finally, market factors such as trends in consolidation and competition, high unit prices of medical services, and the structure and supply of the health care workforce contribute to rising costs. The report argues that these factors are complex and overlapping and cannot be addressed by a single set of policies.

A CNN–ORC poll released on September 10 found that voters believe that President Barack Obama would handle health care issues better than Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would. Fifty-four percent of likely voters and 55% of registered voters thought that Obama would handle Medicare better than his challenger, while 43% of likely voters and 42% of registered voters thought the opposite. Similarly, 54% of likely voters and 53% of registered voters thought that Obama would do better than Romney in handling health care issues more generally, while 45% of likely voters and 44% of registered voters thought that Romney would do better.

A report released by the Census Bureau shows that both the percentage and number of uninsured people in the United States decreased between 2010 and 2011 — the percentage dropping from 16.3% to 15.7%, and the number shrinking from 50 million to 48.6 million — making this period the first in 4 years with such decreases. The decrease is the largest single-year drop the country has seen since 1999. There was no statistically significant change between 2010 and 2011 in the number or percentage of people who were covered by private insurance; the period was the first in 10 years without such a decrease. The percentage of people covered by government insurance, meanwhile, increased from 31.2% in 2010 to 32.2% in 2011, as the number with such coverage grew from 95.5 million to 99.5 million. The largest increases occurred among people 19 to 25 years of age, in part because of the provision of the Affordable Care Act allowing children to remain on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26.

On September 14, the Office of Management and Budget released a detailed report laying out the cuts that will result from sequestration — a legal procedure triggering automatic spending cuts — if it is not avoided by an agreement between Congress and the President by January. Medicare would be cut by more than $11.6 billion over 10 years, though seniors’ benefits would be unchanged. Health care providers face an across-the-board 2% cut to reimbursements, which provider groups estimate will result in the loss of 496,000 health care jobs in the first year. Funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be reduced by $490 million, for the Food and Drug Administration by $318 million, and for the National Institutes of Health by $2.5 billion — a cut that would require the NIH to stop or limit research on cancer and childhood diseases. The Affordable Care Act’s grants for insurance exchanges would lose $66 million, and its prevention fund would lose $76 million.