The Cost of Over Insurance: National Health Expenditures Rising Again

Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the government agency that runs those programs, have released their estimates of national health spending for 2014 through 2024:

Health spending growth in the United States is projected to average 5.8 percent for 2014–24, reflecting the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions, faster economic growth, and population aging. Recent historically low growth rates in the use of medical goods and services, as well as medical prices, are expected to gradually increase.
The health share of US gross domestic product is projected to rise from 17.4 percent in 2013 to 19.6 percent in 2024.

It is a little too easy to say that this outbreak of higher health spending is just due to Obamacare. To be sure, Obamacare has increased health spending with only marginal improvement in access to care. However, the population is aging, too; and the actuaries also take account the positive relationship between economic growth and health spending. The actuaries expect the economy to be relatively strong over the next decade, and estimate the rate of growth of health spending will exceed the rate of growth of Gross Domestic Product by only 1.1 percent. This is less excessive than in most recent decades.

Yet, it is still excessive, and a change for the worse.

Read the entire column at Forbes.