U.S. healthcare spending growth hit 53-year low in 2013

You read that headline right: healthcare spending was the lowest in 2013 in 53 years, since the government began tracking it.

The 3.6 percent growth that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid recorded in 2013 is the smallest increase the agency has ever seen since it started tracking medical spending in 1960. […]

The second-smallest increase came in 2009, when health costs grew 3.8 percent.

Taken together, this shows that health care costs have grown really slowly for five years now. Some of this is likely cyclical: when the economy goes south, patients tend to use less medical care. But there are also hints that some of the slower growth is due to more structural changes in the health care sector—and could stick around for at least the next decade are so.

One of the reasons for that big slowdown in the last five years is of course the Great Recession, but Obamacare is also a factor. That's reflected in the continued very slow growth in Medicare spending. A big part of that slowdown is "a decline in the volume and intensity of physician services." In other words, not as many visits by Medicare patients to the doctor. Since the Medicare population isn't as affected by economic downturns as the rest of the population, that could mean that healthcare reforms are making it more efficient.

This doesn't mean, however, that the healthcare consumer will feel like they're getting a much better deal in health care. Stagnant wages that haven't kept up with the huge increases in healthcare costs in the last few decades have resulted in making healthcare just too damned expensive for many, even with Obamacare. That's got to be the next focus of further reform.