Nearly Half Of All Health Care Spending In 2022 Was For 5% Of The Population

About half (49.7%) of all health care expenditures in the United States in 2022 were for people in the top 5% of the expenditure distribution, according to an analysis of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey Household Component (MEPS-HC). The top 1% of people ranked by their health care expenditures accounted for 21.7% of total health care expenditures. The bottom 50% accounted for only 2.8 % of total health care expenses.

The most commonly treated conditions among people with the top 5% of expenses in 2022 were hypertension (42.9%), followed . . .