How much more does medical care cost than the year you were born?

Most of us have a feeling that medical care costs more than it used to. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has tracked the prices people pay for medical care every year since at least 1950, so we can put a real number on that feeling. Find your birth year below.

The numbers

Here's how much higher medical care prices were in 2025, the most recent full year, than in each birth year:

Born in · Medical care prices in 2025 were…

• 1950: 3,742% higher

• 1960: 2,501% higher

• 1970: 1,606% higher

• 1980: 675% higher

• 1990: 256% higher

• 2000: 122% higher

• 2010: 49% higher

Put another way, something that cost $1 in medical-care prices in 1950 cost about $38 in 2025. Born in 1990? A $1 visit then is roughly $3.56 now.

How we did the math

BLS publishes a yearly average number for medical care prices. For each birth year we divided the 2025 average by that year's average, subtracted one, and turned the result into a percent. For example, 1950 averaged 15.1 and 2025 averaged 580.102. 580.102 ÷ 15.1 is about 38.4, which is a rise of about 3,742%.

All 76 yearly values from 1950 through 2025 are in the data, with no gaps. 2026 isn't included because its full-year average won't be published until the year is over.

Where the numbers come from

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), Medical Care, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted (series CUUR0000SAM), annual averages, from the BLS Public Data API: https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/

• You can look the series up yourself on the BLS data site by its ID, CUUR0000SAM.

• BLS, "Measuring Price Change in the CPI: Medical care": https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/medical-care.htm

The data were retrieved on October 21, 2026.

Things to keep in mind

• This measures consumer prices, not total spending. The medical care CPI tracks prices for medical goods and services such as doctor visits, hospital services, and prescription drugs. These prices include what patients pay and what insurers and Medicare pay on their behalf. Each category's weight in the index is based on households' out-of-pocket spending. Health insurance is measured indirectly, through insurers' retained earnings (administrative costs and profit), not through premium prices. It doesn't measure how much the country spends on health care overall, or what any one family spends.

• Methods have changed over 75 years. BLS has updated how it measures some things over the decades. Health insurance is one example. Long comparisons like 1950 to 2025 are best read as the general size of the change, not an exact figure.

• General prices rose too. Everything costs more than it did in 1950. This chart shows medical care prices alone. It isn't adjusted for general inflation.

• Rounding. The percentages are rounded to the nearest whole percent.

We like numbers that help families plan.

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