Health Care Spending Increases for 2006

A recent report by the government showed that national health spending rose to $2 trillion in 2006, practically doubling in the last decade.

Medicare spending increased at a fast rate in 2006 while private health insurance costs grew at a slow rate. In general, health spending increased to 6.7 percent in 2006.
Other expenditures include prescription drugs which rose to 8.5 percent ($216.7 billion) due to more and more prescriptions being filled by Medicare beneficiaries.

Numerous other factors that contributed to the increase of drug spending include the use of existing drugs for innovative drugs and the increase in costs for biotechnology products.

Over all, health spending has grown at an incredibly fast rate since 1995, increasing by 64 percent in 11 years.

Costs for doctors’ services and nursing homes increased at the slowest rate of growth since 1999 with doctors’ services at 5.9 percent and 3.5 percent.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Medical Malpractice and Negligent Care.