Nominal health spending in the United States grew 4.4% in 2008, to $2.3 trillion or $7,681 per person. This brings health care spending to 16.2% of GDP. In 2003 the total health care spending was 15.3% of GDP. The huge amount being spent continues to grow to an even larger percentage of GDP every year.

The average spending by OECD countries (Europe/USA/Japan…) was $2,966 per person in 2007 (the USA was at $7,290). In 2007 Canada spent $3,895; France $3,601; UK $2,992; Japan $2,581.

I truly do not understand how the USA continues to subsidies those special interest in favor of the current obviously broken system. How
people can possible claim the USA is so bad at health care we can’t possible just pay say 20% more per person to get results no better than other countries. We are not comparing the USA to some idealized dream system. We are comparing it to government run programs that are amazingly cheaper and have at least equal (often better) performance measures.

Do these special interests really expect us to accept that the USA system requires us to pay 243% of the OECD average for no better outcome measures? And even then, tens of millions of people’s lives caused great distress due to the lack of health care or financial ruin due to health care costs they must pay out of pocket? The apologist for the special interests have had decades to fix this system. We can’t afford to keep letting them distort our economy for their benefit. They have had decades to make gains. We need to stop letting the special interests delay and start adopting sensible
solutions now.

Their are many paths to improvement that can be taken at the same time. We need structural reform. We also need performance improvement for health care organizations. The recent health care bill primarily sought to deal with the lack of coverage for tens of millions of people. The bill is also filled with many good test efforts of real improvement that can lead to savings. The time for accepting those that have run a system that costs far too much and delivers far to little should be over.

Guest post by John Hunter of
Curious Cat Investing
and Economic Blog.