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Why Americans Spend So Much on Health Care—In 12 Charts

The U.S. spends more per capita on health care than any other developed nation. It will soon spend close to 20% of its GDP on health—significantly more than the percentage spent by major Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations.

What is driving costs so high? As this series of charts shows, Americans aren’t buying more health care overall than other countries. But what they are buying is increasingly expensive. Among the reasons is the troubling fact that few people in health care, from consumers to doctors to hospitals to insurers, know the true cost of what they are buying and selling.

Providers, manufacturers and middlemen operate in an opaque market that…

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Featured

 Remarks by President Biden on Lowering Healthcare Costs

On too many nights, too many Americans lay in bed staring at the ceiling, worrying what will happen if their spouse gets sick, if their child gets sick, or if something else happens to them.

Articles of Interest

Behind Your Rising Health-Care Bills: Secret Hospital Deals That Squelch Competition

Contracts with insurers allow hospitals to hide prices from consumers, add fees and discourage use of less-expensive rivals.

How We Spend $3,400,000,000,000

Why more than half of America's healthcare spending goes to five percent of patients.

Overkill

An avalanche of unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially. What can we do about it?

The bipartisan plan to end surprise ER bills, explained

The Senate proposal would also require out-of-network doctors and hospitals to tell patients that they are out of network once their condition has stabilized, and give them the opportunity to transfer to an in-network facility.

A baby was treated with a nap and a bottle of formula. His parents received an $18,000 bill

An ER patient can be charged thousands of dollars in “trauma fees” — even if they weren’t treated for trauma.

Actually, Mr. Brill, Fixing Healthcare is Kinda Simple

Thank you, Matt Yglesias, for cutting to the core of Stephen Brill’s huge Time magazine story on the profiteering orgy we call the U.S. healthcare system...

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Join Forces to Pare Health-Care Costs

A new company will focus on technological solutions to provide coverage for U.S. employees at a lower cost.

Is Fasting the Cure for Bloated Healthcare Costs?

Before you cue the calls for a new round of spending for another government program to deal with our health care crisis consider this: what if the most powerful solution doesn't cost anything at all?

Paying Till It Hurts

In her series on the costs of health care, Elisabeth Rosenthal of The New York Times examines the price of medical care in the United States, interviewing patients, physicians, economists, and hospital and industry officials. In each installment, readers were invited to share their perspectives on managing costs and treatment.

The Agony of Medical Bills

Even for people with generous insurance plans, a trip to an in-network doctor can result in thousands of dollars in unexpected charges. Can anything be done?

The Medical Myth of “More Is Better”

We have arrived at a generational crossroads where wasteful, inefficient medicine meets an aging population. We must make it through to the other side as a whole nation.

The problem is the prices

Opaque and sky high bills are breaking Americans — and our health care system.

The real reason American health care is so expensive

What we don’t talk about as much is why. Americans don’t consume more health care than the Germans or the Japanese. We actually go to the doctor less often. The real reason American health care is so expensive compared to other countries is that the prices are higher. We pay more for everything from angioplasties to C-sections, from hip replacements to opioids.

The Smart-Medicine Solution to the Health-Care Crisis

Our health-care system won’t be fixed by insurance reform. To contain costs and improve results, we need to move aggressively to adopt the tools of information-age medicine.

The Unhealthy Politics of Pork: How It Increases Your Medical Costs

No industry in America spends more on lobbying than health care. In 2016, the health care industry spent half a billion dollars on lobbying, with pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and health professionals making the largest contributions. In 2009, the year the Affordable Care Act was debated, health care lobbying exceeded $550 million. (Last year, by comparison, defense lobbying totaled $129 million, and the gun lobby spent just $10.5 million.)

U.S. Health Care: Highest Costs; Not Highest Results

Patients often pay more for health care, but nation lags in life expectancy.

Resources

Clear Health Costs

We’re working to bring transparency to the health-care marketplace. By building a platform that focuses on price information for medical procedures, we are empowering consumers to make informed decisions about the costs of their medical care and coverage.

Health Care Cost Institute

HCCI is a non-partisan, non-profit organization with a public-interest mission. Its overarching goal is to provide complete, accurate, unbiased information about health care utilization and costs to better understand the US health care system. Through research and access to a large health insurance claims database, HCCI seeks to offer answers to critical questions about health care spending and utilization for the entire privately insured health population.

Dartmouth Atlas Project

For more than 20 years, the Dartmouth Atlas Project has documented glaring variations in how medical resources are distributed and used in the United States. The project uses Medicare data to provide information and analysis about national, regional, and local markets, as well as hospitals and their affiliated physicians. This research has helped policymakers, the media, health care analysts and others improve their understanding of our health care system and forms the foundation for many of the ongoing efforts to improve health and health systems across America.

KFF.org

National health spending has grown at historically low rates following the deep recession that ended in 2009. Whether this slowdown stems from broader economic factors, structural changes in the health system, or some combination of the two, is a key issue for policymakers, particularly with major elements of the Affordable Care Act taking effect in 2014.