Opinion: 5 Hollywood moments in the latest US healthcare spending numbers

Actuarial reports about stable growth in health costs don't sound as interesting as suspicious traffic jams or the Kardashian divorce. Maybe that's why this month's report from actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) drew little more than a yawn from media and beltway types. From 2009 through 2012, health care spending in the U.S. grew at the slowest rate since the government started collecting this data in the 1960s. The actuaries found that in 2012 spending "stabilized," growing by 3.7 percent in 2012, and health care accounted for a slightly smaller percent of GDP than the prior year, 17.2 percent versus 17.3 percent in 2011.