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Friday, May 02, 2014

We Just Saw The Biggest Explosion In Health-Care Spending In Over 30 Years, And It Had A Big Impact On GDP

Spending on health care grew an astounding 9.9% in the Bureau of Economic Analysis' advance estimate of first-quarter GDP.

It's the biggest percent change in health-care spending since 1980, when health-care spending jumped 10% in the third quarter. Analysts said it's primarily due to a consumption boost from the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Adjusted for inflation, America is spending more on health care than ever before.

Personal consumption grew by 3.0%, about half of which was due to the growth in health-care spending, said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics.

"If health-care spending had been unchanged, the headline GDP growth number would have been -1.0%," Shepherdson said.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Health care COSTS much more but you are actually getting less thanks to Obama.

Anonymous said...

This will go down as the biggest lie ever! LOL! The GDP and employment numbers will settle the score, unless that's the next department to be sequestered into ObamaSpeak.

Anonymous said...

Isn't anybody frightened by this??? That the government takeover of health care and the spending of our tax dollars is behind this? The fact that there is no growth, or negative growth in the private sector should scare the heck out of everybody.