Why higher health spending is actually good

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(Bloomberg View) — In recent years, health care cost growth has slowed down. This is great news for the federal budget, and for those of us who, you know, get health care occasionally. Unfortunately, researchers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project that the good news may be over. With the population aging, the economy recovering, and Obamacare expanding coverage, they expect health care cost growth to average almost 6 percent over the next decade.

That’s not all bad news. The population is aging because people are living longer. And economic recovery will give us more income to pay our higher health care costs. The newly insured are presumably pretty happy about it too. So there’s no reason to go into paroxysms of mourning over this news. However, it does cast light on a debate that has been going on for some time: why growth in health expenditures has gone down.