While growth in health-care spending is slowing, it will still far outpace the economy's growth over the next 10 years, according to new federal projections.
By 2015, health spending will account for 20% of gross domestic product, up from 16% today. By that year, federal and state governments will be picking up almost half of the health-care tab. Growth in spending over the coming decade is projected to average 7.2% a year.
Rising incomes as well as higher prices for services are driving the trend, according to actuaries and economists at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who compiled the projections. Aging baby boomers, they found, will have a relatively minor, though increasing, effect on health spending in the next decade.