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…
According to research from the CMS Office of the Actuary, healthcare spending growth is decelerating. As published in Health Affairs: In 2011 US health care spending grew 3.9 percent to reach $2.7 trillion, marking the third consecutive year of relatively slow growth. Growth in national health spending closely tracked growth in nominal gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010…
Many health policy researchers talk about bending the cost curve; this means reducing the rate of health care spending below GDP growth. U.S. health spending, however, has consistently grown faster than GDP for nearly a century. Woodward and Wang show that this relationship is surprisingly stable over time, even after the advent of large government…
According to a recent Health Affairs paper, health care spending as a share of GDP grew by the largest percentage point increase since the U.S. government has tracked national health expenditure. Not only did the numerator (health spending) increase–especially for public spending–but the denominator also decreased (i.e., GDP). The article begins as follows: “National health…
National Health Expenditures reached $2.3 trillion, or $7,681 per person. This means that health care services made up 16.2% of the economy. Where did these dollars go? The CBO summarizes where America spends these funds. Source: CBO Long Term Budget Outlook, June 2010.
From the CMS Office of the Actuary: U.S. health care spending growth decelerated in 2008, increasing 4.4 percent compared to 6.0 percent in 2007, as spending growth slowed for nearly all health care goods and services, particularly for hospitals. Health spending growth for state and local and private sources of funds also slowed while federal…