U.S. health spending rose sharply in 2025, thanks to GLP-1 use and more care

America is on pace to spend $6 trillion on health care this year.

STAT News

By Bob Herman

June 24, 2026

• The U.S. spent $5.7 trillion on health care in 2025, a 7.3% increase from 2024, according to the latest government figures published in the journal Health Affairs on Wednesday. That amounted to almost $16,500 per person.

• More patients seeking care, combined with the country’s high baseline of prices, has also resulted in the health care system taking up more of the economy — findings that again reflect people’s widespread discontent with how unaffordable health care has become.

• GLP-1 drugs, which treat diabetes, weight loss, and other conditions, are certainly a major factor in the jump in health care spending. But they're far from the only culprit.

Americans are seeing their doctors, getting hospital procedures, and filling prescriptions more frequently than economists and budget experts anticipated. Weight loss drugs, in particular, have morphed into their own special category of spending and are pushing budgets across the country to their limits.

Combining an increased amount of care with the country’s high baseline of prices has resulted in the health care system taking up more of the economy, new data show — findings that again reflect people’s widespread discontent with how unaffordable health care has become.

The country spent $5.7 trillion on health care in 2025, a 7.3% increase from 2024, according to the latest government figures published in the journal Health Affairs on Wednesday. That amounted to almost $16,500 per person.

Health care accounted for 18.4% of the economy in 2025, up from 18% in 2024. Federal actuaries expect that to tick up again this year, to 18.7%, or $6 trillion.

Health care gaining a few tenths of a percent, as a share of the economy, may seem small. But it translates into hundreds of billions of dollars every year that flow to hospitals, doctors, drug companies, insurers, and other players instead of to other societal priorities, such as schools and infrastructure.

The economy grew about 5% in 2025, but spending across every part of health care increased at a faster clip. Federal officials specifically called out prescription drug spending, which soared more than 11% in 2025. STAT previously reported that GLP-1 drugs, which treat diabetes, weight loss, and other conditions, and cancer drugs have crushed the balance sheets of almost every health insurer.

“A big part of this is GLP-1s,” John Poisal, a deputy director within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ National Health Statistics Group, told reporters Wednesday. “That is pushing [spending] growth rates up for private health insurance, for sure; for Medicare, for sure.”

By analyzing pharmaceutical company revenue data with federal health spending data, STAT found the two drugs specifically indicated for weight loss — Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound — accounted for 4% of the $519 billion in retail prescription drug spending in 2025. When combining the revenue for Novo’s and Lilly’s GLP-1 drugs for all conditions, including diabetes, this single class made up 11% of retail drug spending last year.

Total drug spending is much higher than the $519 billion in the report. That total only factors in prescriptions that people get from retail pharmacies, and not the drugs that people get while they are hospitalized or at physicians’ offices. Those include pricey blockbusters like Keytruda, Eylea, and others.

Jacqueline Fiore, an economist at CMS’ National Health Statistics Group, which is part of the Office of the Actuary, said she and others were surprised by how much spending continued to grow even though health care price increases “continued to be pretty moderate.” Outside of drugs, spending rose the most for hospital care and home health. Hospitals represented about 31% of total spending in 2025, similar to prior years.

Spending within state Medicaid programs rose 8.3% in 2025, but that rate of increase is expected to slow significantly in the next several years after Republicans and President Trump overhaul the Medicaid program by instituting national work requirements and capping supplemental hospital funds.

The country also is expected to add 3 million people to the ranks of the uninsured this year, due in large part to the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.