Visualization of National Healthcare Expenditure (1960-2009)

Summary This design concept visualizes the US National Health Expenditure data. The central two columns in top region show the total health expenditure which is proportionately and recursively broken down into sub catgeories on both sides. The left side colored in green hues shows the Payers for healthcare while the right side colored in purple hues displays the consumption of heath care in form of Services. The bottom region with blue areas depict the trend about total health expenditure as well as growth trends for consumer price index, defense, medicaid, medicare and ssn. The left vertical axis serves as scale for growth (blue area plots) while the right vertical axis provides the scale for total expenditures. Finally, scrubbing the time slider on top enables comparison of all Payers and Service categories over time.

Interaction

Click a box in green or purple region to zoom in/out to the clicked category while revealing its name, amount and percentage of expenditure if hidden. Simultaneously the trend of clicked category is displayed in the bottom region which shows the distribution of funds from 1960 to 2009.
Slider on the top selects an year of interest. Vertical bars show the corresponding year on the trend region at the bottom.
Show All Payers & Show All Services buttons resize all Payers or Services sub category boxes such that all are equally visible. This makes it easy to view sub categories with small or no contribution.
* Simulate Contributions when turned on simulates and displays a random contribution for chosen Payer or Service. This concept provides an effective way to visualize who is paying for what service and vice versa. Furthermore, it is straight forward to compare the share for each category with its own total contribution; its sub and super category contributions as well as its peer's contributions along the same column. At the moment this feature demonstrates proof of concept using random simulated data, but we will implement this driven by actual data as time permits. Note that only this particular feature does not use real data, but the rest of the visualization uses actual data.
Reset Zoom button restores zoom out state for green and purple boxes.
Bottom Bottons toggle the display of respective growth trends. They also serve as a legend by displaying corresponding color of the trend.

Observations (Services - Health care consumption)

The total health expenditure has been rising, the growth is complex and non-linear as can be seen with growth curves. It is interesting to note that the growth for Defense has been lower than Health except for last few years.
Bulk of the costs for Services are for personal health care, they were at 84.1% in 2009. While this is obvious, but now we can see other costs and their composition. For instance capital costs for structures and equipment consumed 4.5% of total in 2009. Also interesting to note is that in 2009 the Total Administration cost was 163 billion dollars vs Research which was funded at 45 billion dollars.
Scrubbing the right slider from 2009 to 1960, a minor variation in proportion of different service categories can be seen. Surprisingly, Capital and Research proportions have steadily decreased over the years. Also peculiar to see that the Prescription Drugs cost proportions were high in 60's, then low in 80's and they have risen back up since 1999.

Observations (Payers - Source of payments)

Vast majority of healthcare is paid through public and private insurance. The combined public insurance contribution is marginally higher than private insurance for 2009 which hasn't always been the case.
The 'Out of Pocket' expenditure has decreased from 47% to 12% from 1960 to 2009.
Medicaid, Medicare and Private insurance payments have been swelling over time.

Data Sources National Health Expenditure Data , Consumer Price Index , Congressional Budget Office