U.S. health spending jumps in 2014

As Medicaid expansion and other costly provisions of the ACA went into effect last year, health spending in the U.S. ticked up in 2014, ending a five-year trend of historically slow cost growth (Source: “Health Spending in U.S. Topped $3 Trillion Last Year,” New York Times, Dec. 3, 2015).

Federal data released this week found that national health spending topped $3 trillion — an average of $9,500 a person — last year.

Health spending grew faster than the economy in 2014, and the federal share of health spending grew even more quickly. Total spending on health care increased 5.3 percent last year, the biggest jump since 2007, and accounted for 17.5 percent of the nation’s economic output, up from 17.3 percent in 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services said in its annual report on spending trends, which was published in the journal Health Affairs. In contrast, health spending grew 2.9 percent in 2013, the lowest rate of increase since the federal government began tracking it in 1960.