National healthcare spending will top $3.35 trillion this year, or about $10,000 for every living person in the United States, federal officials reported Wednesday. That’s up 4.8 percent over 2015, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
While the estimated rate of growth is slowing this year — spending jumped more than 5 percent annually each of the previous two years — it’s supposed to average 5.8 percent between 2015 and 2025. Healthcare spending is projected to account for more than one-fifth of GDP by the middle of next decade, reaching $5.63 trillion by then, and that’s still slower growth than historical norms going back to 1988.
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CMS reported this estimate in a Web-first article in the policy journal Health Affairs.
As is to be expected with the aging of the population and the Affordable Care Act expansion of Medicaid in most states, government healthcare spending will rise to 47 percent of the total by 2025. That’s up from 45 percent in 2014.
Still, the share of uninsured Americans is projected to fall to 8 percent in 2025 from 89 percent in 2014, the first year of the ACA’s individual mandate, CMS said.
The administration tried to put a positive spin on the staggering numbers.
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“The Affordable Care Act continues to help keep overall health spending growth at a modest level and at a lower growth rate than the previous two decades. This progress is occurring while also helping more Americans get coverage, often for the first time,” acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt said in a press statement.
“Per-capita spending and medical inflation also remain at historically very modest levels, demonstrating the importance of continuing to reform our delivery systems. As we look to the future we must continue our efforts that keep people healthy, providing access to affordable, quality care while spending smarter across all categories of care delivery,” Slavitt added.
However, in a conference call with reporters, an official from the CMS Office of the Actuary said that it was hard to pin down the true effects of the ACA. “In terms of our ability to sort of quantitatively estimate what the impact [from Obamacare] will be, we do not have that capability at the moment,” John Poisal, deputy director of the actuary office’s National Health Statistics Group said, CNBC reported.
The forecast, of course, is an inexact science.
“We absolutely agree that there’s uncertainty in a lot of our projections. That’s especially true with prescription drug spending,” CMS economist Sean Keehan said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “If a high-priced drug comes on and has high use, that can certainly impact drug spending.”
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