Healthcare spending reached $3.2 trillion in 2015, a slight increase above 2014 as expanded coverage from Obamacare fuels high spending.
U.S. healthcare spending grew at a rate of 5.8 percent and reached $3.2 trillion, or $9,990 per person. That rate is slightly above the 5.3 percent rate for 2014, federal data published Friday in the journal Health Affairs showed.
“Faster growth in total healthcare spending was primarily due to accelerated growth in spending for private health insurance (7.2 percent), hospital care (5.6 percent) and physician and clinical services (6.3 percent),” a release from Health Affairs said Friday.
Obamacare has expanded insurance coverage to about 20 million people through the Medicaid expansion or private coverage.
The spending rate for 2015 remains below the rate before Obamacare’s coverage policies, such as the marketplaces, went into effect in 2014. From 2010-13, total health spending increased at roughly the same annual rates of 3.6-3.7 percent.
However, in 2014 and 2015, that growth rate shot up to an average annual rate of 5.5 percent. Last year’s growth rate of 5.8 percent was above the 5.5 percent that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had predicted.
CMS projected earlier this year that there would be an average annual growth rate of 5.8 percent in the future, but officials cautioned on a call with reporters that the projection was based on 2014 data and not 2015 data.
The 2015 rate is still below the rate in 2007, which was 6.5 percent.
Health spending’s share of gross domestic product also increased from 17.2 percent in 2013 to 17.8 percent in 2015.
The federal government bore more of the cost for healthcare in 2014 and 2015. The federal share of all healthcare spending from programs such as Medicare and Medicaid grew by 3 percentage points, growing from 26 percent in 2013 to 29 percent in 2015, the data found.
Increases in coverage aren’t the only factors that drove high spending last year.
The analysis found that retail prescription drug spending reached $324 billion in 2015 and represented 10 percent of healthcare spending.
Prescription drug spending grew at a rate of 9 percent in 2015, below the growth rate of 12.4 percent in 2014.
While the growth rate was lower in 2015, “growing in prescription drug spending was faster than that of any other service in 2015,” Health Affairs said.
The rapid growth is due to higher prices for new medicines, price increases for existing brand-name drugs, more spending on generics and a decrease in the number of expensive drugs that have expiring patents, the analysis added.
High-priced specialty drugs, such as new cures for hepatitis C and pricey cancer medications, also are contributing to the increase.
High drug prices have been a top priority for some in Congress, but wholesale reforms to cap prices appear to be in doubt as Republicans and President-elect Trump make repealing Obamacare a top priority.
The data was culled from the Office of the Actuary at CMS. Economists with CMS developed the analysis, which was published in the journal.
