Medicare spending rose an estimated 6.2 percent during 2011, driven by a big jump in payments to skilled nursing facilities, more spending at doctors’ offices and bigger outlays for Medicare Advantage plans, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported Monday in its annual survey of projected health spending.

The report has projected figures for 2012 forward, and estimated figures for 2011 spending. Medicare’s total outlays reached $554 billion in 2011, an increase of $32 billion from the previous year. The 6.2 percent growth in spending accelerated from an expansion of 4.2 percent in 2010.

Medicare accounts for 21 percent of the nation’s $2.7 trillion health care bill. Health spending consumes 17.9 percent of the United States’ total economic output.

Here are the main reasons why Medicare spending rose faster in 2011:

*The government issued a one-time increase in payments for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). These are places where patients typically go for rehabilitation after a hospital stay for something like a hip replacement or knee replacement, or following a lengthy illness.

*Spending for physicians services under Medicare jumped 7.6 percent in 2011, a big surge from the 3.2 percent growth in 2010. This jump was due in part to the availability of free preventive examinations put into place by the Affordable Care Act. For the first time, starting in 2011, Medicare beneficiaries had no co-payments or deductibles for preventive services such as an annual wellness visit; certain screenings for cancer, cardiovascular health, osteoporosis and diabetes; and a flu shot.

The faster growth in physicians’ services under Medicare “rebounded after unusually slow growth in 2009 and 2010,” said Anne B. Martin, an economist with the CMS’ Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at a news conference on Monday.

*Spending rose in Part C (Medicare Advantage) due to increases in membership. These privately administered plans provide care for their members within a network of doctors and hospitals, and offer extra benefits such as eye care, and prescription drugs, which are not covered under the traditional Medicare program. 

Traditional Medicare, also known as fee-for-service, has grown “only modestly since 2009, while Medicare Advantage enrollment has been growing at a faster rate,” Martin said at Monday’s news conference.

Medicare Advantage enrollment has doubled since 2005, and has now reached about 13 million, or 27 percent of the total population of people enrolled in Medicare.

Medicare Part D, which covers prescription drugs, offered a 50 percent discount in 2011 to people with high out-of-pocket spending. This “led to somewhat greater use of brand name drugs by beneficiaries in 2011 and decreased the amount that Medicare beneficiaries spent out-of-pocket  on drugs,”  according to the official CMS spending report  issued Monday.

Medicare had 47.7 million beneficiaries in 2011, with spending of $554 billion, or $7,434 per enrollee.

Health care spending overall is growing at the slowest rates in the 52 years since the government began keeping detailed spending records.

Total spending for health care in the United States during 2011 was $2.7 trillion, up $100 billion from the previous year. This represented a per capita outlay of $8,680 for each American.

“As a share of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), overall health care spending also remained the same as in the previous two years—17.9 percent,” said Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Health and Human Services (HHS). “This contrasts sharply with the pattern of the last thirty years, when health spending as a share of GDP grew by about 0.3 percent per year.”

Spending growth for health care in 2011 was 3.9 percent for the third year in a row. This partly reflects the lingering impact of the deepest economic slump since the Great Depression. Millions of people lost their jobs and their health insurance.

There was an increase of 7 million in the uninsured population between 2007 and 2010.

Sebelius attributed the slower rate of growth to changes made by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

“A number of provisions in the health care law that will help control costs and spending are still being implemented, but the statistics show how the Affordable Care Act is already making a difference,” she said. “Growth in total private health insurance premiums remained low in 2011 at 3.8 percent. And the net cost ratio (which takes into account overhead and profits) for individual health polices declined thanks in part to the new 80/20 rule, which requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on health care or provide rebates to their customers.”