The spending in the US healthcare rose at the slowest rate in over a half-century in 2013, the government analysts said on Wednesday.
The country’s health care tab rose by 3.6 percent last year, showed a report prepared by the financial analysts at the Health and Human Services department.
According to the analysts, this is the lowest annual rise since 1960, when the measurement of expenses was actually started by the government.
They further said that the sluggish growth is majorly due to an uncertain economic recovery from the 2008 great recession.
The experts, however, claimed that the pace is likely to speed-up in the coming times when more and more Americans get themselves covered under the new health care law, Obamacare, and the economy returns on track.
The healthcare law of President Barack Obama’s administration was not completely implemented last year. It appears to possess a push-and-pull effect on healthcare spending in 2013, nudging costs higher in some areas and holding them down in others.
“The key question is whether health spending growth will accelerate once economic conditions improve significantly. “Historical evidence suggests that it will,” said the report from the Office of the Actuary.
The Office of the Actuary is a numbers-crunching unit of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Last year, the nation expended USD 2.9 trillion as healthcare costs from prescriptions, doctor bills, hospital and nursing home care.
The report was published online in the journal Health Affairs.
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