Chart 1.2: Annual Percent Change in Total National Health Expenditures (NHE), 1990-2023

Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary. The source data was released in December 2024.
Notes:
(1) CMS completed a benchmark revision in 2019, introducing changes in methods, definitions and source data that are retroactively applied to the entire time series. For more information on this revision, see here
(2) National Health Expenditure (NHE) are expressed in the current year's dollar, 2023.
(3) In 2021, U.S. health care spending rose to $4.3 trillion, a significant slowdown compared to the 10.4% increase in 2020. This deceleration was largely due to a 3.5% drop in federal health care spending following the surge in pandemic-related expenditures the previous year. The decline outweighed the effects of increased health care usage and broader insurance coverage. For more archived information on this decline, see the report here