How Can the United States Spend Its Health Care Dollars Better?
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
Commentary on: US Spending on Personal Health Care and Public Health, 1996-2013. [JAMA. 2016]
Emanuel EJ.
How Can the United States Spend Its Health Care Dollars Better?
JAMA. 2016 Dec 27;316(24):2604-2606. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.16739.
In 2015, the United States spent roughly $3.2 trillion on health care.1 That is a staggering, almost unimaginable amount. Indeed, this level of spending makes the US health care system the fifth largest economy in the world, behind only the US, Chinese, Japanese, and German national economies. By 2020, health care spending in the United States is expected to surpass the national economy of Germany, at which point the US health care system will be the fourth largest economy in the world. To put this into another context, in 2015, the entire US Department of Defense budget was just under $600 billion. In addition, the entire worldwide information technology sector (including hardware, software, data analytics, and customer-facing initiatives) accounted for $2.46 trillion, with the United States and Canada together contributing less than $1 trillion.
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