The growth in U.S. health-care prices is projected to outpaceeconomy-wide inflation for the first time since2010, the second report in a week to signal the end of a longstretch of restrained medical increases.

This year, price increases for personal health expenditures are projected torise 2.2 percent, compared with 1.9 percent for overall inflation,according to a report released Wednesday by the Centers forMedicare and Medicaid Services. The findings confirmed arecent analysis warning that the U.S. could be atthe cusp of a return to higher medical inflation.

Related: Employees' health care spending up, usagedown

Health spending is determined by the price of goods andservices, as well as how much health care people use. In recentyears, increases in health spending have been driven by volume, asmillions more people gained insurance coverage under the AffordableCare Act. While high-cost drugs have made headlines, overallprice hikes have been historically low, increasing by an average of1.1 percent annually between 2014 and 2016.

Those trends are projected to reverse. Government actuariesexpect the number of people without health insurance to increaseslightly after Republicans lifted the ACA’s penalty for goinguninsured late last year. Medical price growth, meanwhile, willrebound, “in part reflecting more rapid growth in health-careworkers’ wages,” the report said.

Health-care inflation has been partly restrained by limits onhow much Medicare pays hospitals and physicians under the ACA andother legislation, combined with overall slow growth in pricesthroughout the economy.

Inflation ahead

Rising medical prices will drive growth in personal healthspending in the next decade

In recent days, concerns about higher-than-expected inflationhave rattled stock markets and pushed up Treasury yields. Investorsfeared that a tightening labor market and rising wages could pushup prices and spur the Federal Reserve to raise interest ratesfaster than anticipated to keep the economy from overheating.

Total health spending is projected to increase by 5.3 percent toabout $3.7 trillion in 2018, according to the CMS report, and thegrowth will average 5.5 percent per year over the next decade.While that’s still faster than the overall rate of economic growth,it’s an improvement from past decades. Between 1990 and 2007,annual health spending increased by 7.3 percent per year.

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