Earlier reports showed U.S. health care spending could see its first increase after five dismal years of unproductive spending in the industry. However, the newly revised statistic from the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis has the estimate at only a 1.4 percent increase, Modern Healthcare reported.
At the beginning of the year, spending was extremely high, which might have had many experts believing the health care spending was going to continue to rise. Additionally, the affects of the Affordable Care Act has impacted the total spending as well, the source said. While spending was up at the beginning of 2014, experts are now wondering if those early figures blew things out of proportion.
"[The final revision] illustrates the risks of trying to make inferences about long-term healthcare cost growth from noisy quarterly data," said Jonathan Skinner, a professor and healthcare economist at Dartmouth College, according to Modern Healthcare.
At the same time, the effects of the Affordable Care Act still need to take place, which is expected to help increase health care spending with more affordable rates for Americans, the source reported.