Updated August 4, 2026. Quick answer: Medicare spending reached $1,118.0 billion in 2024 — 21 percent of all US health spending, growing 7.8% that year. Every figure on this page is quoted from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ own National Health Expenditure Fact Sheet and is free to cite with a link. Where a figure below is ours rather than theirs, it says so.
Headline statistics
$1,118.0 billion — Medicare spending, 2024.
CMS: “Medicare spending grew 7.8% to $1,118.0 billion in 2024, or 21 percent of total NHE.” NHE is national health expenditure — all US health spending from every payer.
$5.3 trillion — total US health spending, 2024.
CMS: “NHE grew 7.2% to $5.3 trillion in 2024, or $15,474 per person, and accounted for 18.0% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”
7.7% a year — projected Medicare growth, 2025–34.
CMS: “Medicare spending is expected to grow the fastest among major sources of funding over 2025-34, at 7.7 percent per year on average” — against 5.0% for both Medicaid and private health insurance.
$556.6 billion — out-of-pocket spending, 2024.
CMS: “Out of pocket spending grew 5.9% to $556.6 billion in 2024, or 11 percent of total NHE.” This is what households paid directly, after insurance of every kind.
31% federal, 28% households — who sponsors US health spending.
CMS: “The largest shares of total health spending were sponsored by the federal government (31 percent) and the households (28 percent)”, with private business at 18 percent, state and local government 16 percent, other private revenues 6 percent.
The number CMS does not print
Writers usually want Medicare spending per person, and the fact sheet gives per-person spending only for all health spending ($15,474 in 2024), not for Medicare alone. We are deliberately not computing one. Dividing $1,118.0 billion by an enrolment count taken from a different CMS release, with a different reference date and a different treatment of part-year enrolment, produces a figure that looks authoritative and is not reconcilable to either source. That division is the most commonly repeated Medicare statistic on the internet and almost nobody states which enrolment denominator they used.
What can be said cleanly from one source: Medicare is 21% of national health spending and is projected to grow faster than any other major payer through 2034. If you need per-enrollee spending, the CMS Medicare Enrollment Dashboard and the Trustees Report publish it directly — cite that, not an arithmetic reconstruction.
What this does not tell a household
Programme totals are not a household budget. Nothing above says what any individual pays, and the costs that actually land on a retiree are decided by enrolment timing and plan choice rather than by aggregate growth rates. The two that bite hardest are permanent:
- The Part B late-enrollment penalty is lifetime — it is added to the premium for as long as Part B is held.
- The Part D penalty works the same way, and is triggered by a gap in creditable drug coverage that many people do not know they had.
- Which window applies at all depends on the situation, not the calendar — check the window before assuming.
For the first-time decision see the choices at 65; for the annual one, the open-enrollment checklist and how Advantage networks differ. If you are still contributing to an HSA, Medicare changes what you may do. Household-level spending across all categories is at retirement spending statistics.
Cite this data
The figures above are CMS’s, quoted verbatim and attributed as theirs — cite CMS for those. If you use this page’s framing, the arithmetic caution, or the per-enrollee point, a link is welcome and no permission is needed.
Suggested citation: “Medicare cost statistics,” Clear Money Guide, 2026, clearmoneyguide.com/medicare-cost-statistics/, citing Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, National Health Expenditure Fact Sheet.
Source and method
All quoted figures are from the CMS National Health Expenditure Fact Sheet, read 2026-08-04, covering calendar year 2024 with projections to 2034. NHE figures are revised as CMS updates its accounts, and the 2025 figures are expected in the normal December release — the year is stated next to every number here for that reason. Our method is at methodology; the datasets we compute ourselves are at the datasets page; mistakes go to corrections. Index of every statistics page: statistics.
Where health costs sit inside the whole budget: health care is the only major category that rises in retirement, and it rises as a share of a shrinking total.
The 2026 figures
This page covers national spending. For what a household actually pays: Medicare open enrollment statistics carries the household figures for 2026 with their year labels — the $202.90 Part B premium, the $283 Part B deductible, and the $1,736 Part A deductible that applies per benefit period rather than per year — plus paste-ready lines for anyone quoting them.