### Instruction: Extract causal economic narratives from the input text below! A causal economic narrative is a pair of events where one event causes the other event. State all narratives in one of the following forms: 'event A - "causes" - event B' or 'event A - "caused by" - event B'.
### Input: Curiously, too, the sharpest slowdown has occurred with Medicare. In fact, about three-quarters of the health spending slowdown nationwide was due to slow-as-an-(almost)-trickle growth in spending on the elderly. From 1992 to 2004, per-capita spending among Medicare benificiaries grew by 3.8 percent each year, adjusted for economy-wide inflation; since 2005, the rate has been a mere 1.1 percent, according to a new Health Affairs study. In plain English, that means total spending per elderly person hasn't  fallen , per se, but we're spending thousands of dollars less today than was projected to be the case back in the early 2000s. So who gets credit? Write your response with at least 700 words.
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