It’s one thing to talk about the massive amount of money, trillions of dollars, that get spent every year in the US health care system. In 1997, that number was $1.5 trillion; in 2012, it had risen to $2.8 trillion, and health care spending as a share of GDP had increased by an absolute 4%. Last year, about one in every six dollars contributed to GDP was spent on health care.
But merely reciting the numbers makes it sound like it’s easy to cut. As I’ve said many times on our blog, though, one person’s waste is another person’s income. One in seven American workers is employed in the health care sector.
Go read the rest in my latest post over at the AcademyHealth blog.
