Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund and a nationally recognized economist, has a bone to pick with the federal government's recent report on U.S. healthcare spending.
Growth in U.S. health spending remained slow in 2010 and the health share of the gross domestic product was unchanged from 2009, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported.
But Davis, who formerly served as the deputy assistant to the U.S. secretary for health policy, wrote in a blog on Jan. 19 that CMS overlooked in their report the lower spending that is projected through the end of the decade.
"Either the original estimates were too high," Davis wrote, "or the tectonic plates underlying the health system are beginning to shift in anticipation of new incentives under health reform or in response to healthcare leaders' efforts to transform care over the last decade."
