A Slowdown in Health Spending Growth?

The January 2016 trend report from the Altarum Institute continues the engrossing saga of recent trends in health care spending. Last month’s expanded report used data from the Census Bureau’s December Quarterly Services Survey to show that overall spending had notched up in the third quarter of 2015, and that spending in 2015 exceeded 2014. However there were also signs in these data that a slowdown may be approaching, as the increased spending was largely driven by coverage expansion, which seems to be at or near a plateau. Among the suggestive indicators in last month’s data was a beginning of a softening in the growth of new jobs in health care, and a reduction in the growth of spending on health care services, a very important component of overall spending.