Health Care Spending Was Nearly Flat Last Year

Check out the good news today:

Health care spending as a share of GDP declined in 2017. That’s only the second time this has happened in recent history, and it continues a trend of nearly zero growth since 2009. Per capita spending was up, but only slightly:

That’s a 1.1 percent increase over 2016—not quite flat, but pretty close.

We still spend way more on health care than any other country, but our growth rate has been flattening for many years. Once again, this is evidence that the spending slowdown which started in the mid-aughts wasn’t an anomaly. The enormous spike that began in the early 80s was. We’re now getting back to the 1950-1980 normal, and there’s every reason to think that’s going to last for a while.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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