U.S. health spending projected to grow modestly

National health spending will increase modestly over the next decade, propelled in part by the gradual rebound of the U.S. economy and the growing ranks of Americans who became insured under the ACA, government actuaries projected Wednesday (Source: "Health Care Spending Forecast To Increase Modestly In Next Decade,” Kaiser Health News, Sept. 3, 2014).

But those growth rates are not as high as what the country saw for the two decades before the Great Recession crippled the U.S. economy at the end of 2007, according to the report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary and published in the journal Health Affairs.

The actuaries estimate that health spending grew just 3.6 percent in 2013, the fifth year of historically low rates of spending growth. But it will accelerate to 5.6 percent in 2014. They also forecast that the average growth rate for 2015-2023 would be 6 percent. That is up just slightly from last year.