Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now: what's behind the continuing rise in health care spending and why the rate of growth has slowed.
Ray Suarez has the story.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): For the third consecutive year, health care spending in the U.S. grew by just under 4 percent.
Government data released today show that roughly 2.7 trillion dollars was spent in total in 2011, or just under $8,700 a person. That 4 percent increase is above the rate of inflation, but it's well below the recent historical trends.
The information was published today in the journal "Health Affairs."
And to help us break it down, I'm joined again by Susan Dentzer. She's the editor of the journal and an analyst for the NewsHour.
And, Susan, has this ever happened before? Have we ever had a three-year run of such modest price increases?
SUSAN DENTZER, "Health Affairs": Not in the 52 years in which these national health expenditure data have been collected.
It really is unprecedented. And, clearly, it's very much linked to the very dramatic recession we had and the slow growth period that has followed it. We never have seen though -- even though it is the case that recessions always produce a slowdown in health care spending growth, we have never seen one quite of this magnitude. And it didn't -- it never has kicked in quite as early as this one did.
It's almost if, as soon as the recession set in, health spending growth really plummeted and we continue to see the effects to this day.
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