An expert panel from CMS came to the National Press Club on December 2 to disclose the statistical information on health spending growth in 2015 appearing on Health Affairs “Web First” and scheduled to appear in the January Health Affairs article “National Health Spending: Faster Growth in 2015 as Coverage Expands and Utilization Increases”.
The CMS Office of the Actuary reports that national health spending showed faster growth in 2015 as coverage expanded through ACA provisions and also through Marketplace plans and the Medicaid program.
The statistical data estimates that in 2015, healthcare spending in the U.S grew at a rate of 5.8 percent and reached $3.2 trillion or $9,990 per person. National health expenditures represented a 17.8% share of the GDP in 2015.
Moderator Alan Weil JD, Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs http://healthaffairs.org introduced the panelists from CMS so they could discuss findings from the research and some of the statistics from the new CMS report.
Anne B. Martin, Economist in the Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group at CMS www.cms.gov/about=cms/Agency-Information/cmsLeadership/office_OACT.html told the attendees, “Over the last 55 years, the largest increased in health spending’s share of the U.S economy have usually occurred abound periods of economic recession.”
Martin continued to say, “While the 2014 and 2015 increases occurred more than five years after the nation’s last recession ended, they coincided with 9.7 million individuals gaining private health insurance coverage and 10.3 million more people enrolling in Medicaid coverage. One of the factors that contributed to the increase, was the rapid growth in retail prescription drug spending.”
“While 2014-15 is unique given the significant changes in health coverage, health spending is projected to increase as a share of the overall economy in the decade ahead. It will be influenced by the aging of the population and changing economic conditions.”
Drivers of faster growth in 2014 and 2015 resulted from coverage expansion as a result of the ACA, rapid growth in total retail prescription drug spending due to new medications and specifically for new drugs to treat hepatitis C, increased use and intensity of services at hospitals, plus more patients received physician and clinical services
Faster growth in total healthcare spending was primarily due to accelerated growth in spending for private health insurance (7.2%), plus increases in Medicare spending (4.5%), Medicaid spending (9.7%).
Major goods and services growth amounted to spending for physician and clinical services (6.3%), hospital spending (5.6%), and spending for retail prescription drugs amounted to (9.0%). Although the 2015 spending growth of 9.0% was slower than the rate of 12.4%) in 2014, growth in prescription drug spending was faster than of any other service in 2015.
Other panelists at the December 2 briefing included Aaron Catlin, Deputy Director in the National Health Statistics Group at CMS, Micah Hartman, Statistician in the National Health Statistics Group, and Benjamin Washington a Statistician in the National Health Statistics Group.
Go to “Web First” at Health Affairs http://healthaffairs.org. Further details on the CMS statistics will appear in the January 2017 issue of Health Affairs.