Health Spending Grew At Slowest Pace In 50 Years.

Media outlets widely covered a CMS report that showed the recession hindered Americans' spending on healthcare, but most sources still expressed concerns that healthcare expenditures continue to grow unchecked. The New York Times (1/6, A19, Pear) reports, "Total national health spending grew by 4 percent in 2009, the slowest rate of increase in 50 years, as people lost their jobs, lost health insurance and deferred medical care, the federal government reported on Wednesday." Nevertheless, "health care accounted for a larger share of a smaller economy -- a record 17.6 percent of the total economic output in 2009, the report said."

        The AP (1/6, Alonso-Zaldivar) reports, "The recession slowed the growth of the nation's health care bill to the lowest levels ever measured," yet, "the slowdown did not change the nation's underlying problem with out-of-control health care spending." Data from Medicare's Office of the Actuary show that "Americans spent $2.5 trillion on health care in 2009, or $8,086 per person." Notably, the "figures do not reflect the impact of President Barack Obama's landmark health coverage expansion, which didn't pass until 2010."

        McClatchy (1/6, Pugh) reports, "Unlike previous recessions, when spending for health services began to slow some two years after an economic downturn, the effect of the Great Recession was swift and profound on insurers, health care providers and patients in both 2008 and 2009." McClatchy adds, "Fueling the spending slowdown in 2009 was a 3.2 percent decline in private health insurance enrollment as 6.3 million people lost job-based health coverage that year. That loss of private coverage also curbed growth in out-of-pocket spending by patients, many of whom delayed medical care because of a lack of cash."

        Meanwhile, "spending on Medicaid soared -- by 9 percent, compared with less than 5 percent in 2008 -- as more people qualified for the public insurance program for the poor," the Washington Post (1/6, Goldstein) reports.

        In fact, "government spending on Medicaid and Medicare rose almost six times faster than insurance company expenditures in 2009 from the prior year as the recession pushed more Americans onto public assistance," Bloomberg News (1/6, Young) reports. The federal government "and states combined to spend $373.9 billion on Medicaid...an increase of 9 percent. Outlays for Medicare, aiding the elderly and disabled, rose 7.9 percent to $502.3 billion." Meanwhile, "insurance companies led by UnitedHealth Group Inc. spent $801.2 billion, an increase of 1.3 percent."

        Politico (1/6, Coughlin) says that despite the trend, "some sectors saw accelerated health spending, including a whopping 10 percent bump for home health care, an 8.3 percent increase in other residential and personal care and 5.3 percent for prescription drugs." Commenting on the data, Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, said, "The continued rise in health care costs is not sustainable. ... Rising health care costs threaten our economic competitiveness, make health care coverage less affordable, and crowd out other urgent national priorities. We urge policymakers to work on a bipartisan basis to pass reforms that will control the soaring cost of medical care."

        The Wall Street Journal (1/6, Landers, subscription required), Reuters (1/6, Heavey), CQ HealthBeat (1/6, Reichard, subscription required), and Modern Healthcare (1/6, Zigmond, subscription required) also cover the story, as does The Hill (1/6, Pecquet) in its "Healthwatch" blog.