Industry News

On December 16, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released their report on the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA). The NHEA measures annual U.S. expenditures for health care goods and services, public health activities, government administration, net cost of health insurance, and investments related to health care. According to the CMS, U.S. health care spending grew 4.6% in 2019 and reached $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person. As a share of the gross domestic product (GDP), health care spending was 17.7% in 2019, up from 17.6% in 2018.

In 2019, health care spending for the broad categories of services and products include:

• Hospital care spending increased 6.2% to $1.2 trillion, up from 4.2% in 2018;
• Physician and clinical services spending increased 4.6% to $772.1 billion, up from 4.0% in 2018; and
• Retail prescription drug spending increased 5.7% to $369.7 billion, up from 3.8% in 2018.  

In 2019, the growth in federal government spending increased 5.8%, up from 5.4% in 2018. The federal government’s increased spending for health care is mainly due to faster growth in federal general revenue and Medicare net trust fund expenditures. Private businesses’ health care spending increased 3.7%, down from 5.7% in 2018 while household’s health care spending increased 4.5%, down from 4.8% in 2018.

Further information is available here.