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US Spends More on Health Care than Peers

“Compared to other developed nations, the U.S. spends more on health care per capita and devotes a greater share of its GDP to health. Since 1980, the U.S. also has had among the highest average annual growth rates in per capita spending on health care. Despite this relatively high level of spending, the U.S. does not appear to provide substantially greater health resources to its citizens,¹⁰ or achieve substantially better health benchmarks, compared to other developed countries.”[1]

The anomaly of health care spending in the United States is the very fact that while the U.S. spends the most on health care – by orders of magnitude – than it’s peers among the developed nations, it continues to offer the least comprehensive coverage to its citizens. Not only does the U.S. spend significantly more per capita on health care – with total health care expenditures reaching $2 trillion in 2005 or $6,700 per person[2] – the growth of healthcare spending has also been rising at a much faster pace than most other developed countries.[3] In 2005, the U.S. was estimated to have devoted 16 percent of its GDP to health care, a number that is projected to rise to 20 percent by 2015 when health care spending will, according to projections, account for $4 trillion.[4] Cross national comparisons of health care spending by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) in 2003[5] and 2004[6] indicate that the U.S. far exceeds its competitors in per capita spending on health care as well as share of GDP devoted to health care spending (Figures 1 & 2).

Figure 1: Total Health Expenditures as a Share of GDP, U.S. and Selected Countries, 2003

Figure 2: Health Care Spending, Public and Private spending per capita, 2004