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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Comments
20
Years Active
5
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#8331
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Activity Over Time

2007
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2009
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2010
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2012
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2013
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2014
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2015
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2016
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2017
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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