> "I would guess they are not taking into account employer contributions, as that is not money I as a consumer ever see in my paycheck" No, but it's money that

> "I would guess they are not taking into account employer contributions, as that is not money I as a consumer ever see in my paycheck" No, but it's money that has a direct impact on wages and given the inconsistency of rates of employer contributions, it would mean that "What Americans Spend Their Money On" is not equivalent to "What Things Cost, That Americans Buy". Similarly not counting government payments toward health-care breaks that equivalence. I wasn't trying to dismiss a potential usefulness of seeing where net consumer spending is going, on average. I was just responding to what I saw as a casual conflation between "we're not spending much more out of pocket" with "the price of healthcare isn't that big a deal". I saw the GP post as suggesting that large year-over-year percent increases hadn't amounted to a large net impact when compared to earnings. I may have misread that, but that's the implication I was responding to. And there's simply no way 7% of net consumer spending is the right picture from which we can deduce the impact of health cost increases.