HEALTH

7.8% Rise in Health Care Spending Reported: Health care spending rose to $884.2 billion in 1993, up 7.8% over the previous year, the Health and Human Services Department reported. The amount was equal to an estimated average of $3,299 per person for the year, with the per-person spending up $205. The department said that although the rise in 1993 was the slowest since 1986, the increase was still 2.4% faster than the growth in the overall economy. Because of this, the share of the domestic national product spent on health care rose to 13.9% in 1993, up from 13.6%. Department Secretary Donna Shalala attributed the slow growth in health spending to very low inflation in the rest of the economy rather than to permanent changes in the health sector. However, Mike Bromberg, executive director of the Federation of American Health Systems, which helped defeat the Clinton Administration’s cost-control proposals for health spending, said the low growth figure demonstrates that “the market is working better and can work. And if we remove some barriers, the market can work even better.”