Americans spend vast sums on health care. Certainly, health
care is expensive all over the world, and it makes good sense for rich
countries to spend large amounts to extend their citizens’ lives and to
reduce pain and suffering. But America does this about as badly as it is
possible to imagine.
Health care can sometimes harm people, through medical mistakes, or the overprescription of opioids. But there is also harm to people’s lives from its extraordinary and unnecessary costs. The percentage of national income that is absorbed by health care has grown over the past half-century, from 5% in 1960 to 18% in 2017, reducing what is available for anything else from 95% in 1960 to 82% today. The costs of health care contribute to the long-term stagnation in wages; to fewer good jobs, especially for less educated workers; and to rising income inequality.
The U.S. health care system spent $10,739 per person in 2017, about five times what the country spends on defense and about three times what it spends on education. High costs inflate the earnings of many providers and make the industry unnecessarily large. The cost of employer-provided health insurance, largely invisible to employees, not only holds down wages but also destroys jobs, especially for less skilled workers, and replaces good jobs with worse jobs at lower wages.
Health care costs directly hurt those without insurance, while those who are insured must pay co-payments, deductibles and employee contributions. Health costs also affect federal and state governments, which pay for Medicare and Medicaid. Governments must collect more taxes; provide less of something else, such as infrastructure or public education; or run deficits that shift the burden to future taxpayers. We could cut back costs by at least a third without compromising our health.
The U.S. has lower life expectancy than the other wealthy countries but vastly higher expenditures per person. In 1970, the countries were not very far apart, with American life expectancy not much worse and expenditures not much higher, but other countries have seen faster improvements in health and slower increases in costs. In 2017, the Swiss lived 5.1 years longer than Americans but spent 30% less per person; other countries achieved a similar length of life for still fewer health dollars. If a fairy godmother were to reduce the share of health care in American GDP to Switzerland’s, 5.6% of our GDP (or more than a trillion dollars) would be available for other things. That is more than $3,000 a year for each person in the U.S., or about $8,300 per household. If each household had been given an additional $8,300 in 2017, median income growth over the past 30 years would have been double what it actually was. These very large numbers are just the waste of health care.
Read more at: Unequal Access to Health Care Costs Us All | Time: American health care is the most expensive in the world, and yet American health is among the worst among rich countries
Health care can sometimes harm people, through medical mistakes, or the overprescription of opioids. But there is also harm to people’s lives from its extraordinary and unnecessary costs. The percentage of national income that is absorbed by health care has grown over the past half-century, from 5% in 1960 to 18% in 2017, reducing what is available for anything else from 95% in 1960 to 82% today. The costs of health care contribute to the long-term stagnation in wages; to fewer good jobs, especially for less educated workers; and to rising income inequality.
The U.S. health care system spent $10,739 per person in 2017, about five times what the country spends on defense and about three times what it spends on education. High costs inflate the earnings of many providers and make the industry unnecessarily large. The cost of employer-provided health insurance, largely invisible to employees, not only holds down wages but also destroys jobs, especially for less skilled workers, and replaces good jobs with worse jobs at lower wages.
Health care costs directly hurt those without insurance, while those who are insured must pay co-payments, deductibles and employee contributions. Health costs also affect federal and state governments, which pay for Medicare and Medicaid. Governments must collect more taxes; provide less of something else, such as infrastructure or public education; or run deficits that shift the burden to future taxpayers. We could cut back costs by at least a third without compromising our health.
The U.S. has lower life expectancy than the other wealthy countries but vastly higher expenditures per person. In 1970, the countries were not very far apart, with American life expectancy not much worse and expenditures not much higher, but other countries have seen faster improvements in health and slower increases in costs. In 2017, the Swiss lived 5.1 years longer than Americans but spent 30% less per person; other countries achieved a similar length of life for still fewer health dollars. If a fairy godmother were to reduce the share of health care in American GDP to Switzerland’s, 5.6% of our GDP (or more than a trillion dollars) would be available for other things. That is more than $3,000 a year for each person in the U.S., or about $8,300 per household. If each household had been given an additional $8,300 in 2017, median income growth over the past 30 years would have been double what it actually was. These very large numbers are just the waste of health care.
Read more at: Unequal Access to Health Care Costs Us All | Time: American health care is the most expensive in the world, and yet American health is among the worst among rich countries
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