We try our best to stay away from sensationalism here at Financial Sense but this chart speaks for itself. Medical care costs have skyrocketed this year and are now at the highest annual growth rates since 2007, just prior to the last recession.
Source: FRED
If you look at this data going back to 1948, which you can do so here, you’ll see that 9 of the 11 prior recessions were associated with a sustained increase in medical care costs. For that reason, we are going to keep a close eye on our recession indicator going forward since, with economic growth already weak, this could very well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
