Health Care Costs in the United States Are Higher Than Everyone Else’s

That's Not News; Now How to Fix It, That Would Be News

Austin Frakt of the Incidental Economist, an excellent health care economics site says this about a graph showing health care costs in the OECD countries.

Nothing new here. I just need to post this chart because I keep looking for it for reference. My main takeaway is that the US spends a much higher proportion of its health care dollars privately than do almost all other OECD nations.


The graph he is talking about is this.

Total health expenditure as a share of GDP, 2009

Now when  a country is this far out of whack, something is wrong.  Something is fundamentally wrong.  Unless of course the United States is right and every other country is doing health care wrong.  Well maybe, after all wouldn’t those like Mr. Romney who glory in “American Exceptionalism” say we are right and everyone else is doing health care incorrectly.

Of course since Mr. Romney now disavows his own health care plan as a model for America it’s kinda hard to say what he thinks is exceptional.  Certainly not his Massachusetts system.