GDP Growth, Not Spending Restraint, Is Key to Moderating Health's Share of the Economy

Aaron Carroll delivers on my suspicion that the flatlining of health care spending as a percent of GDP in the 1990s is mostly about rapid GDP growth during that decade:

There was a moderation of the rate of increase in the nineties, but clearly growth as such is playing a big role here. This is sort of an obvious point, but the implication is that the debate over "health care costs" is a little bit misguided. Making it easier for English-speaking college graduates to move to the United States would reduce health spending as a share of GDP, but it's not something a blue-ribbon commission on health care costs is going to come up with.