U.S. health insurance spending may increase just a little bit in 2011, but it could grow rapidly in 2014, government researchers say.
Economists and actuaries in the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are making those predictions in a paper published in the Web edition of Health Affairs, an academic journal that focuses on the delivery and financing of health care.
The research team, led by Andrea Sisko, an economist at the CMS national health statistics group, is estimating that overall national health expenditures increased 5.8% in 2009.
This year, in part because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the legislative package that includes Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), total national health expenditures could increase about 5.1%, the researchers estimate.
If Congress had left the old laws in place, the rate of increase might have been 3.9%, the researchers say.