Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Fiore et al. (2026) just released their annual national health expenditure projections in Health Affairs. I summarize some of the key findings in Q&A format. How much is the US currently spending on health care? $5.7 trillion. This is represents an increase in healthcare spending as a share of GDP from 18.0% in 2024 to…
That is according to the 2024 national health expenditure data published in Health Affairs last week (Hartman et al. 2026). Here is the abstract: Health care spending in the US reached $5.3 trillion and increased 7.2 percent in 2024, similar to growth of 7.4 percent in 2023, as increased demand for health care influenced this two-year trend. As…
CMS’s Office of the Actuary predicts that national healthcare expenditures (NHE) will increase from 17.6% of GDP in 2023 to 20.3% of GDP by 2033. The Keehan et al. (2025) paper provides more details: National health expenditures are projected to have grown 8.2 percent in 2024 and to increase 7.1 percent in 2025, reflecting continued…
It appears that health care spending as a share of GDP has leveled off. While reaching close to 20% of GDP during the pandemic, 2022 had health care spending (17.3% of GDP) more in line with pre-pandemic norms. Hartman et al. (2023) reports: Health care spending in the US grew 4.1 percent to reach $4.5 trillion in…
That is the conclusion from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services National Health Expenditure Projections. The paper–published in Health Affairs—summarizes the spending changes as follows: National health expenditures are projected to grow 5.4 percent, on average, over the course of 2022–31 and to account for roughly 20 percent of the economy by the end of that…
A paper in Health Affairs by Martin, Hartman, Benson, Catlin, and The National Health Expenditure Accounts Team (2022) finds that national health expenditures (NHE) rose but declined as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Health care spending in the US grew 2.7 percent to reach $4.3 trillion in 2021, a much slower rate than the increase…
That is the projection from CMS’ Office of the Actuary. Keehan et al. (2020) write in Health Affairs: National health expenditures are projected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.4 percent for 2019–28 and to represent 19.7 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the period. Price growth for medical goods and services…
That finding is according to an article [Martin et al. 2018] by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Office of the Actuary’s (OACT). Total nominal US health care spending increased 3.9 percent to $3.5 trillion in 2017, slowing from growth of 4.8 percent in 2016..Slower growth in health care spending in 2017 was mainly attributable to…
That is the conclusion reacted by CMS’ Office of the Actuary. As published in a recent Health Affairs article: Under current law, national health expenditures are projected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent for 2016–25 and represent 19.9 percent of gross domestic product by 2025. For 2016, national health expenditure growth is anticipated to…
Many researchers use household data sources to examine a variety of hypothesis. The use of household data has many benefits including allowing for more detailed socioeconomic information (e.g., education, income) beyond what is contained in administrative claims files. One drawback of household data is that extrapolations made from household survey data may not match national…