The Department of Health and Human Services has reported on Friday. The growth coincided with continuing increases in the number of Americans with insurance coverage, through private health plans or Medicaid.
Federal spending on health care has grown by 21 percent over the past two years, as millions of Americans gained coverage through the Affordable Care Act, the Department said in its annual report on health spending.
Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government has been paying the full cost of Medicaid coverage for newly eligible beneficiaries. Thirty-one states have chosen to expand eligibility. Overall, the government said, health spending accounted for 17.8 percent of the nation's economy in 2015, up from 17.4 percent in 2014.
Total health spending rose 5.8 percent last year, and spending per person increased 5 percent. The Obama administration said this growth was "below the rates of most years before passage of the Affordable Care Act." The health law was always expected to fuel an increase in health spending, but the law has cost less than originally projected by the Congressional Budget Office, in part because the number of people signing up for subsidized coverage through according to the New York Times.
Over the last 55 years, the largest increases in health spending's share of the economy have typically occurred around periods of economic recession the 2014 and 2015 increases occurred more than five years after the last recession ended.
The report noted "strong growth in new specialty medications such as those used to treat hepatitis C, cancer, autoimmune diseases and multiple sclerosis, as well as in more traditional brand-name medications such as those used to treat diabetes."
In 2015, the report said, prices for existing brand-name drugs increased at a double-digit rate for the fourth consecutive year. An increase in the number of new drugs approved for use was also a factor according to HHS.
"In 2015," the government said, "45 new drugs were approved, more than in any one year over the past decade." $324.6 billion, representing 10 percent of all health spending, the government said.
In the past two years, the report said, 20 million people either gained private health insurance coverage or enrolled in Medicaid, primarily as a result of the Affordable Care Act. The share of the population with health coverage increased to 90.9 percent in 2015, from 86 percent in 2013, before the law's major coverage provisions took effect.
