US health spending is expected to rebound with recovering economy

US health spending will likely rebound as the economy recovers, ending a period in which spending growth had dropped to historical lows, a new report says.1

From 2009 to 2012 US health spending grew just 3.9% a year, the slowest since the government began tracking healthcare spending in 1960.

However, most of the slowing, three quarters of it, was due to the recession and not to cost saving changes in the healthcare delivery system, the report concluded.

The report was based on a statistical analysis conducted by researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Center …