--- title: Think Health Care is Pricey? Get Ready to Spend Even More description: Soon one out of every five dollars Americans spend will to go healthcare. authors: - name: Ian Salisbury role: Senior Editor url: https://money.com/author/ian-salisbury-2/ bio: Ian Salisbury was a senior editor at Money, focusing on investing, banks and mortgage. at_money_since: 2013 articles: 91 covers: - Personal Finance - Economy and Politics - Housing - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes former_staff: true published: '2015-07-29T15:05:54.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T06:20:35.000Z' section: Personal Finance tags: - Economy - Health Care - health care costs - Insurance - Medicare - Obamacare word_count: 262 canonical: https://money.com/health-care-costs-growing-faster/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![pile of prescription medicine pills and tablets](https://img.money.com/2015/07/150729_ff_healthcarecosts.jpg?crop=0px%2C43px%2C2100px%2C1181px&quality=85) For the past six years Americans have gotten a respite from fast-rising health care costs. No more. With millions of baby boomers entering retirement and pricey new drugs hitting the market, U.S. health care spending, which had increased at relatively moderate 4% rate since the financial crisis, grew 5.5% last year, according to a [new government study](http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/early/2015/07/15/hlthaff.2015.0600) reported on Tuesday by [The Wall Street Journal](http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-health-spending-growth-jumped-to-5-5-in-2014-1438114020). You can expect more too. The actuaries who calculated the figures, project that spending will average 5.8% between 2014 and 2024. By then, health care as a share of the nation's overall economy will have grown to 19.4% from 17.4% in 2013. In other words, our nation's medical bills will account for [one out of every five dollars we spend.](http://markets.cbsnews.com/Health-care-spending-to-accelerate-US-report-says/42763217923cb590/) The changes aren't totally unexpected. A big part of the extra costs are tied to the fact that baby boomers -- many now in their 60s -- are requiring more care. Important but expensive new drugs, like one that helps treat Hepatitis C, are also a factor, according the Journal. Still, the rising costs aren't good news, especially considering a key promise of the Affordable Care Act, which brought access to health insurance to millions of Americans, was to get the growth in health care spending under control, a goal known as "[bending the curve](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/the-cost-curve-is-bending-does-obamacare-deserve-the-credit/)." For people who get their health insurance coverage at work, rising costs are likely to mean a continued push by employers toward high-deductible plans, which can have steep out-of-pocket costs. [Read here](https://money.com/health-care-out-of-pocket-costs/) for more on tools for keeping medical bills under control. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/health-care-costs-growing-faster/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Personal Finance", "item": "https://money.com/personal-finance/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Expenses", "item": "https://money.com/expenses/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Think Health Care is Pricey? 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