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This article presents data on health care spending for the United States, covering expenditures for various types of medical services and products and their sources of funding from 1960 to 1994. Although these statistics for 1994 show the slowest growth in more than three decades, health spending continued to grow faster than the overall economy. The Federal Government continued to fund an increasing share of health care expenditures in 1994, offset by a falling share from out-of-pocket sources. Shares paid by State and local governments and by other private payers including private health insurance remained unchanged from 1993.

Growth in health care expenditures slowed to 9.1 percent in 1984, the smallest increase in expenditures in 19 years. Economic forces and emerging structural changes within the health sector played a role in slowing growth. Of the $1,580 per person spent for health care in 1984, 41 percent was financed by public programs; 31 percent by private health insurance; and the remainder by other private sources. Together, Medicare and Medicaid accounted for 27 percent of all health spending.