Health Spending Unscathed in Shrinking Economy

This morning’s terrible revision to first quarter GDP – from an initial estimate of 0.2 percent real growth to a real loss of 0.7 percent – confirms that health spending stands over our weak economy like a colossus.

In the initial estimate, personal consumption spending on health services increased by $23 billion (chained 2009 dollars). Today’s second estimate reports $24.2 billion (Table 3, line 17). So, we can be pretty confident that the folks at the Bureau of Economic Analysis who do this good work have mastered how to measure spending on health services.

This emphasizes how much of our prosperity is being devoured by a health system that is still driving everyone crazy, post-Obamacare. The real drop in GDP was a loss of $30.6 billion.

Read the entire entry at NCPA's Health Policy Blog.