May 3, 2024
A new Policy Research Perspective provides a detailed examination of the 2022 U.S. National Health Expenditures (NHE) data released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In 2022, health spending was 17.3% of GDP and increased by 4.1% to $4.4 trillion (or $13,493 per capita). This spending growth rate is comparable to pre-pandemic rates (4.3% in 2019). Although government spending to manage the pandemic led to substantial increases in NHE, these expenditures significantly declined in 2021 while utilization of medical goods and services rebounded. By 2022, top-level patterns in health spending more closely reached that of the pre-pandemic period.
In 2022, 83 percent of health spending was from personal health expenditures ($3,704.8 billion). This includes spending on hospital care (30.4 percent of total health spending or $1,355 billion), physician services (14.5 percent or $647.7 billion), prescription drugs (9.1 percent or $405.9 billion), clinical services (5.3 percent or $237.2 billion), nursing care facilities (4.3 percent or $191.3 billion), home health care (3 percent or $132.9 billion), and other personal health care services (16.5 percent or $734.9 billion). Although CMS generally presents physician and clinical services as a combined category, they are examined separately in this report because of notable differences between the two categories in spending levels and growth rates.