Modest projected growth in the U.S. economy will help propel increases in health spending beyond growth in the GDP over the coming decade, according to a report from CMS published in Health Affairs.

While health spending grew a modest 3.6% in 2013, according to estimates from government actuaries, the health care growth rate is expected to weigh in at 5.6% this year, and average 6% from 2015 through 2023. The sector’s share of GDP is expected to increase from 17% in 2012 to 19% in 2023.

According to a report by Kaiser Health News, government actuaries are no longer measuring the effect of the Affordable Care Act on health spending. “Now that the Affordable Care Act has been in place for well over four years, it is becoming increasingly difficult to accurately estimate…what the world would look like in the absence” of the law, KHN reported.

The report is evidence that the economy is an important determinant of health care spending, Paul Ginsburg, a public policy professor at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California, told KHN.

“There's a been a lot of debate over the past year or two about how much of the slowdown we've experienced has been from the business or the economic cycle and how much is due to real changes in health care,” Ginsberg told KHN. ”My sense is it’s both. This very steep recession and this very slow recovery from it, especially when you look at the very low growth in wages, is something that has definitely depressed health care spending. The implication of higher deductibles, of greater cost sharing, that’s important as well."