In a stark reminder of growing costs, the government estimated yesterday that health care consumed a record 17.3 percent of all spending in the U.S. economy last year, or roughly $2.5 trillion.
This was the single-largest one-year jump in health-care spending as a share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government started keeping such records a half-century ago.
And as soon as next year, more than half the nation’s total health-care tab may fall to the government for the first time, according to an annual report by independent actuaries at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS.
The rise in current costs, driven in part by surging spending in the government Medicare and Medicaid programs and the bleak projections for the future, do not take into account changes that may come if Democrats succeed in reviving their health-overhaul legislation.
The report, while issued by a nonpartisan accounting agency, appears likely to fuel further debate about the health bills stalled in Congress.
In the absence of change, the new report raises a grim prospect for the country – a health-care system consuming an ever-greater and potentially unsustainable share of the economy even as private health coverage lags.
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