Summary
Americans will spend about 16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on health care this year. That will amount to about $2.3 trillion, or roughly four times what we will spend on national defense, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "At 16 percent of GDP, U.S. health spending is double the median of industrialized countries, and since 2000, [U.S. health spending] has been growing more rapidly than before," according to "U.S. Health System Performance: A National Scorecard," an article that appeared in the September 2006 issue of Health Affairs. By way of comparison, according to a report last year by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Kingdom spent 8.3 percent of its GDP on health; Canada spent 9.9 percent; Germany spent 10.9 percent; Spain spent 8.1 percent; and Japan spent 8 percent.
As recently as 1980, total U.S. health expenditures amounted to 9.1 percent of GDP. According to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Peter Orszag's recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee: "CBO projects that, without changes in law, total spending on health care will rise from 16 percent of GDP in 2007 to 25 percent in 2025 and 49 percent in 2082." Since 2000, as the cost of health insurance premiums increased 98 percent for a family of four (nearly five times the rate of inflation), the number of uninsured Americans has increased from 38 million (13.7 percent of the population) to 47 million (15.8 percent). In 2007, according to a recent report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the average employer-provided health maintenance organization family insurance premium cost $11,879.See the full content of this document
Extract
Health Care and the Candidates
While it is routinely asserted that America's health care system is the best in the world, the reality is that American health outcomes (longevity, infant mortality, incidence of preventable chronic disease) are signi...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
