Trends in National Health Care Expenses Per Person in the U.S. Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population, 1996-2012

This Statistical Brief presents estimates of the percentage of persons with any health care expense for the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population, based on the Household Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC) for the years 1996 through 2012. Estimates are shown separately for the non-elderly and elderly populations. Average and median expense per person with an expense are also included. In order to examine growth in expenses after accounting for inflation (i.e., real expenses), all dollar amounts for 1996 to 2011 are inflated to 2012 dollars based on the GDP Price Indexhttp://www.meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/about_meps/Price_Index.shtml. All differences between estimates discussed in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level.