US total health care expenditure before and after recession

Objectives: There is an increase to health care expenditure in the United States and it continues to rise each year. With the increase of population, life expectancy, and enrollment in government programs and insurances, it is important to understand growth trends in order to help estimate future increase expenditures. This may lead to evaluation of practical solutions for the expenditures.
Methods: The study had data collected from a twenty-year period from 1996 to 2016 from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey focused on health care expenditures before and after the recession in 2007. Descriptive statistics were reported along with inferential statistics on expenditures stratifying by various demographic groups. The expenditures data had been adjusted for inflation to reflect of 2016 dollar values.
Results: In a twenty-year period, total healthcare expenditures in the United states had almost doubled, from $838.33 billion in 1996 to $1.62 trillion in 2016. Furthermore, in that same period there was a high increase of 133%, in geriatric healthcare expenditure from $243.12 billion in 1996 to $566.75 billion in 2016. Additionally, the average health care expenditure per person in the United States increased from $3,118 in 1996 to $5,006 in 2016, which is a 60.5%.
Conclusions: With the higher increase rate for geriatric healthcare expenditures, that rate will continue to increase at an accelerated rate due to the geriatric population pool increasing because of longer life expectancy. With the larger population pool, there will be an increase in demand for all health care needs which may surge the average health care expenditure per person.