WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) -- The Obama administration said Monday that the country had seen its health care spending growth slow down for four years in a row.
According to a report released by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, health care spending in the country grew at 3.7 percent in 2012 to 2.8 trillion dollars, or an average of about 8, 900 dollars a person, in line with the annual growth of the previous three years coming in between 3.6 percent to 3.8 percent.
"This means that growth during all four years has occurred at the slowest rates ever recorded in the 53-year history of the National Health Expenditure Accounts," the agency said in the report.
The latest report also found that the health care accounted for 17.2 percent of the U.S. economy in 2012, slightly down from 17.3 percent in 2011, as health care spending grew slower than the country's gross domestic product.
However, the report found that the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature health care overhaul, has had only a "minimal impact" on the growth of health care costs.
"The low rates of national health spending growth and relative stability since 2009 primarily reflect the lagged impacts of the recent severe economic recession,"said Anne Martin, an economist at the agency and lead author of the report.
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