to help flesh out what's behind these changes, we check in with susan dentzer, editor in chief of the journal health affairs where the report was published today. she's also an analyst for the newshour. susan, at 3.9% up, it's still going up much faster than the cost of living. but that's considered a tame number. >> it really is, ray. if you compare it to prior years, you can really see the difference. for example, in 1980, the rate of growth of health spending jumped in one year by 13%. in 1990, it jumped by 11% in one year. in recent years we've seen that rate of growth slow. these two most recent years, 2009 and 2010 represent the slowest rate of national health spending growth in 51 years. we know why that happened largely. it's because the economy plummeted in 2009. we had the first decline in overall gross domestic product in 2009 than we have had in 60 years. >> suarez: unpack that number. when you say we know why it happened and it's the economy. were people buying less health care or able to pay less for it. >> both. across the board we see people were going to the doctor le