Health care spending by state and local governments changed by the second smallest rate on record in 2014, a year in which millions of Americans gained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of state Medicaid programs.
State and local health care spending rose by just 1.8 percent to $515 billion, according to the latest data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a unit of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. By comparison, the country’s total health bill—public and private—increased by 5.3 percent, breaking a five-year string of historically slow national growth of 4 percent or less.
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