January 2, 2024

According to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (accessed January 2, 2024): “US health care spending grew 4.1 percent to reach $4.5 trillion in 2022, faster than the increase of 3.2 percent in 2021 but much slower than the rate of 10.6 percent in 2020. The growth in 2022 reflected strong growth in Medicaid and private health insurance spending that was somewhat offset by continued declines in supplemental funding by the federal government associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In a related article published in the journal Health Affairs (“National Health Expenditure Accounts Team. National Health Care Spending In 2022: Growth Similar To Prepandemic Rates“):

“Personal health care prices, which reflect the prices associated with the goods and services consumed, increased by 2.3 percent in 2022 compared with 2.1 percent in 2021 (data not shown). Price growth for providers that receive a large share of their payments from health insurance increased at a relatively low rate. In 2022, price growth for hospitals, physician and clinical services, and retail prescription drugs continued to be low, with rates of 2.8 percent,⁴ 0.5 percent,⁵ and 1.2 percent,⁶ respectively, and it was also relatively low for home health care agencies (2.5 percent)⁷ and nursing care facilities and continuing care retirement communities (3.0 percent).⁸ Conversely, other services that receive a smaller share of payments from health insurance, including dental services, other nondurable medical products, and durable medical equipment, can react more quickly to changing market conditions such as increased underlying price inflation, and these services experienced higher price growth in 2022 compared with 2021.³

“For non–personal health care, which includes government administration, the net cost of insurance, government public health activities, noncommercial research, and structures and equipment, prices increased 7.5 percent in 2022 after a decline of 1.1 percent in 2021 (data not shown). Prices for government administration, government public health activities, noncommercial research, and structures and equipment reflected strong growth in input prices such as wages and supplies in 2022, and increases in net gains or profits for insurers contributed to faster price growth in the net cost of insurance (data not shown).

“Nominal health spending of $4.5 trillion in 2022, which reflects an increase of 4.1 percent over 2021 levels, consisted of personal health care (an 83 percent share in 2022), government administration and the net cost of insurance (a 7 percent share), investment (a 5 percent share), and government public health activities (a 5 percent share). Spending for personal health care increased 4.0 percent in 2022 after faster growth of 5.5 percent in 2021 (exhibit 2). The slower growth in personal health care spending in 2022 was due to slower growth in hospital care (from 4.5 percent in 2021 to 2.2 percent in 2022), dental services (from 18.2 percent in 2021 to 0.3 percent in 2022), and physician and clinical services (from 5.3 percent in 2021 to 2.7 percent in 2022). Growth in non–personal health care spending, which increased 4.4 percent in 2022 after declining 6.8 percent in 2021, more than offset the slowdown in personal health care spending growth (data not shown).”

World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other OECD member nations.

Page last updated January 2, 2024 by Doug McVay, Editor.