National Health Care Spending Rose Faster Last Year Because More People Got Care

WASHINGTON ― Health care spending by U.S. households, businesses and the government rose almost 6 percent last year to $3.2 trillion, driven by the large expansion of health coverage brought about by the Affordable Care Act, federal auditors reported Friday. The good news is this means more Americans had health insurance or government health benefits and that they used them to receive medical care. The bad news is the uptick, which follows several years of historically low growth in health care spending, means health care made up an even larger share of the U.S. economy, reaching 17.8 percent in 2015, a 0.4 percentage point increase. The independent Office of the Actuary at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service published the new data in the journal Health Affairs. Total national expenditures grew by 5.8 percent in 2015, the largest year-to-year increase since 2007, and 0.5 percentage points faster than in 2014, when the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of coverage began. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 20 million previously uninsured people have gained coverage from private health insurance or Medicaid since 2014, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported the uninsured rate is at an all-time low. “Our significant progress in reducing the nation’s uninsured rate, while providing strong protections for Americans if they get sick, would not be possible without the Affordable Care A...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news