Health Affairs, a journal dedicated to health policy, published an article today that reports on the forecast for healthcare spending in the US. In 2007, America spent about 16% of its Gross Domestic Product on healthcare. By 2017, that number is expected to rise to about 20% of GDP (a total of about $4.3 trillion). A 4% increase may not seem like much, but it represents a proportional growth that outpaces the adjusted growth for the 2017 GDP. By my calculations, the dollar amount of a 4% increase in healthcare-spending-as-proportion-of-GDP would cost more than current budgets for the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Education, and Energy, combined.1 The following chart shows the forecast for this increase:

National Healthcare Expeditures Growth and GDP
Image courtesy of Health Affairs.

This growth is equivalent to about a 6.7% increase in Read the rest of this entry »