The problems of climbing health care costs and a lack of health insurance for an estimated 37 million individuals in the United States have focused attention on health care issues. Health care expenditures have grown faster than the overall economy for the past three decades, rising from 7.4 percent of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) in 1970 to over 14 percent by 1992. If current trends prevail, health care expenditures could reach an unprecedented 19 percent of nominal GDP in the year 2000.

In light of the uncertainty concerning the future of health care, BLS has conducted an analysis of two possible paths for the health care industry and for employment in the economy and in the health related industries and occupations. The health care alternatives presented in this article examine a high and a low range of health care spending built around the bureau's 1992-2005 moderate-growth projections described in November 1993 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. These alternatives do not attempt to quantify any specific proposals for health care reform. Rather, they present a range of employment impacts that might result should health care spending in 2005 fall between these two projected levels.