In 2015, spending on health care accounted for 17.8 percent of the United States GDP1, yet the majority of this spending was concentrated in a relatively small percentage of the population. In fact, about 15 percent of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population had no health care expenditures in 2015, and only five percent of the population accounted for over half of health care spending. An individual's annual health care spending is a combination of multiple factors, including their need for and access to health care.
In this Statistical Brief, data from the Household Component of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC) are used to describe the overall concentration of health care expenses across the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized population. The distribution of spending is further described by age and among persons treated for selected health conditions (mostly chronic), which are two key policy relevant factors. All differences discussed in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level.