US Healthcare Spending

Discussions center on the US spending more public and total money on healthcare per capita and as a percentage of GDP than most other countries, despite poorer health outcomes, with frequent citations to OECD, World Bank, and Wikipedia data.

📉 Falling 0.5x Health
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#8331
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Activity Over Time

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Keywords

US PUBL.ZS IR wordpress.com healthsystemtracker.org GDP econofact.org HN en.m ZS healthcare gdp spending health care spends health capita medicaid countries drug

Sample Comments

apsec112 • Feb 2, 2021 • View on HN

The US already spends more tax dollars per capita on healthcare than virtually any other country:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_h...

icebraining • Jul 24, 2017 • View on HN

Reminder: the US already spends more public money on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, Finland, Canada and many others.http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.PUBL.ZS?year_high...

smacktoward • Oct 24, 2018 • View on HN

This is the exact opposite of the truth. The US spends a disproportionately high amount on health care compared to other industrialized nations, and receives worse outcomes from that expenditure to boot. See https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-... for details.

That is public spending on healthcare:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

bestouff • Nov 10, 2024 • View on HN

Are you sure the US isn't just spending a lot on a private healthcare predatory system, not healthcare per se ?

njarboe • Oct 2, 2019 • View on HN

Surprising to most, the US governments spend a higher percent of GDP on healthcare than most European countries[1]. Then we also have high private sector spending on healthcare. Its pretty crazy.[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

simonsarris • Nov 1, 2023 • View on HN

The American government spends more on public healthcare per capita than any other nation.https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

icebraining • Jul 4, 2020 • View on HN

The US spends more tax money per capita on healthcare than most EU countries. And then it spends a bunch more privately.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

jrflowers • Nov 18, 2025 • View on HN

This is either intentional bad faith trolling or you are not aware of the per capita spending on healthcare in the US.https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

DanBC • May 2, 2018 • View on HN

The US government pays a huge amount on healthcare. This is whether you do it by total; by GDP; per capita.https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...If you include private insurance:> As a percentage of GDP, the UK spen