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Key Findings

1. Health care expenditures, including insurance premiums, out-of-pocket expenditures, and taxes devoted to health care, nearly doubled between 1999 and 2009.
2. This increase has substantially eroded what an average family has left to spend on everything else, leaving them with only $95 more per month than in 1999.
3. Had health care costs tracked the rise in the Consumer Price Index, rather than outpacing it, an average American family would have had an additional $450 per month — more than $5,000 per year — to spend on other priorities.

When the price of a gallon of gas or a pound of hamburger rises, consumers can anticipate how the increase will affect what they have left to spend on other goods. It is far less obvious to consumers how increases in health care costs hit their pocket- books. In the ten-year period between 1999 and 2009, U.S. health care spending nearly doubled, climbing from $1.3 trillion to $2.5 trillion. In 2009, while the rest of the U.S. economy plunged into recession and millions lost their jobs, health care costs grew by 4 percent. As a result, the percentage of our nation's gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to health care reached 17.6 percent, up from 13.8 percent only ten years earlier. Although these numbers are striking, they do not easily translate into figures that are meaningful to individual Americans.