CBO now estimates Medicare spending to grow 4.5 percent over five years and 6.5 percent over ten years. Naturally, the slowdown in overall spending growth has also been witnessed in the individual parts of the Medicare program. As an example, the projected growth in home health service spending has been lowered from 8.3 percent to 5.6 percent per year. There are several possible answers but as yet no definitive one. While this slowdown marks a departure from Medicare's programmatic history, it is not that unusual in context to the economy as a whole where slowdowns in price increases and low inflation have become the relative norm.
Inflation overall is down and has remained so for some time.
It is not surprising that some of this would spill over to Medicare savings. In addition, with a robust economy workers are more likely to remain employed, and so delay their reliance on Medicare. Obviously, this leads to savings as well. The spending reduction also has a compounding effect. If spending is slower than expected in one year, then the next year's spending has a good chance to beat initial estimates, too.