The Office of the Actuary of CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services), analyses trends in health care expenditures. For further information: such an analysis, recently by Stephen Heffler, et al., appears on a periodic basis at the web site of "Health Affairs." National Health Expenditures (NHE) are therein reported and projected as shown in the following table (taken from Exhibit 1 of the Feb. 23, 2005 analysis).

year	1993	1998	2003	2006	2014
Total (billion$)	888	1,151	1,679	2,078	3,586
Hospital	320	379	516	624	1,007
Professional services	281	376	542	667	1,161
Long-term care	88	123	151	182	291
Drugs & equipment	88	133	232	309	608
Administration of insurance	53	65	120	147	253
Public health	27	38	54	69	131
Research	16	21	40	51	91
Construction	16	18	25	29	44
NHE per capita ($)	3,354	4,098	5,671	6,830	11,046
NHE as % of GDP	13.4	13.2	15.3	16.0	18.7

Costs are sometimes measured by charges, but a better measure usually is of expenditures.

Expenditures frequently are measured in terms of types of charges: hospitals, physicians, pharmaceuticals, etc. These may be measured for a geographic region or a health care plan/institution. The following table comes from Aaron Catlin, Cathy Cowan, Stephen Heffler, Benjamin Washington, and the National Health Expenditure Accounts Team. "National Health Spending in 2005: The Slowdown Continues," Health Affairs, January/February 2007.

Year	2004		2005
$ (billions);   % change	$	%	$	%
Total	1,859	7.2	1,988	6.9
Hospital	567	7.9	612	7.9
Professional services	581	7.0	622	7.0
Long-term care	158	6.2	169	7.3
Drugs & equipment	246	7.0	259	5.4
Administration of insurance	135	10.3	143	5.7
Public health	53	-0.6	57	7.7
Research	38	6.7	40	4.6
Construction	82	7.6	87	6.3
NHE per capita ($)	6,322	6.2	6,697	5.9
NHE as % of GDP	15.9		16.0

Costs also may be measured in terms of the (for further information) costs of coverage for insurance purchased by an individual, an employer, or a government.

But there are several important aspects to costs, with different measures. Deciding which measure are used and publicized will influence policy, for example in deciding the agenda of public concern and creating incentives that guide the administration of programs. The measurement of costs may be done according to:
-- Classification by the source of the service, as in the above table.
-- Classification by purpose of expenditure: e.g. disease prevention, chronic disease, acute care, etc.
-- Classification by condition or procedure: e.g. back pain, VBAC
-- Classification by population group: e.g. by age, by socioeconomic status.
-- Classification by payer: e.g. employer, individual, government.
-- Classification by geographic area: e.g. by nation, by state, by rural v. urban
-- Classification by elements of Gross Domestic Product.
Consider how the choice of the classification used affects how concerns are raised, how interests are involved, how "solutions" are formulated, how programs are administered, etc.