Healthcare spending was a 20-year high in 2020, study says

Money spent on healthcare in the United States hit a 20-year high in 2020.

A recent study blames COVID-19 for the increase in healthcare spending.

According to KKTV, healthcare took up nearly 20% of total spending. National health spending grew by nearly 10% at the beginning of the pandemic. Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by over 2%. These numbers come from a study published in the journal Health Affairs.

According to the global expenditure on health report of 2021, global spending on health has doubled over the past two decades, reaching $8.5 trillion US in 2019 and 9.8% of GDP.

High income countries accounted for nearly 80% of global health spending. The US alone accounted for more than 40%. In most countries, about half of health spending went towards primary health care (PHC) and represented about 3% of GDP on average.

During the pandemic, early indications from high income countries suggest that those governments responded quickly. Overall health spending in 2020 grew as a result of rapid increases in public spending.