CBO: Health spending to more than double by 2022
Government spending for Medicare, Medicaid and other health-care programs will more than double in the next decade to $1.8 trillion, or 7.3 percent of the country’s total economic output, according to a congressional report released yesterday. In its annual budget and economic outlook, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that even under its most conservative projections, health-care spending would rise by 8 percent a year from 2012 to 2022, mainly as a result of an aging U.S. population and rising treatment costs. The report said keeping physician payments at current levels through 2022 would cost the federal government $316 billion, up from last year’s CBO estimate of $290 billion. Lawmakers in Congress are trying to reach a deal on a one- or two-year “doc fix” under Medicare.