Health spending to reach $ 4 trillion by 2017

Health spending to reach $ 4 trillion by 2017 -

A new report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicted Monday that the United States spend over $ 4 billion a year on health care in 2017.

seem like a lot of money? It is. Written out, it looks like this: 4,300,000,000,000 - that's eleven zeros. In other words, it will be about one in five dollars spent in the United States

The increase in health care spending is driven by cost inflation of medical services, and an aging population . From 2011, the baby boom generation will begin receiving Medicare benefits. Over the next decade, the federal and the state will pay about 49 percent of the nation's health care expenditures.

Andrea Sisko, an economist with the CMS and one of the authors of the report, was quoted in Washington Post "accelerating the growth of public spending is due to fine generation enlisting the peak of the baby boomers in Medicare. "

the CMS report was published in the online edition of the journal Health Affairs .

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