Here’s the good news – growth in overall healthcare spending has slowed, long a goal of public policy. Here’s the bad news – middle class families are still spending more out-of-pocket. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, healthcare spending now exceeds eighteen percent of gross domestic product.
The government has taken on a larger share in recent years as more people age into Medicare and as Medicaid expanded due to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in twenty ten. Economists have suggested that what has happened is the emergence of three Americas.
The first group, the rich, can afford healthcare with relative ease. They often have good private health insurance. The second group, the poor, can access public assistance. But for the middle class, a larger share of healthcare spending comes out-of-pocket.
A Brookings Institution study released in June indicates that middle income households now devote the largest share of their spending to health care, about nine percent, a rise of more than three percentage points since nineteen eighty four.
By twenty fourteen, middle income households were spending twenty five percent more on healthcare than they were before the recession began in two thousand and seven while spending on food and clothing fell.
