Health Care Spending: What the Future Will Look Like

European critics of the U.S. health care system often focus on the private provision of health care and health insurance. Yet the more important difference between the United States and other developed countries is the failure to control government spending. Other countries employ global budgets and control access to expensive drugs and new technology. The United States, by contrast, has very meager spending controls. If current trends continue, U.S. government health care spending will consume an ever growing portion of national income — far more so than any other developed country. Government health care expenditures have grown much more rapidly than the economy in all developed countries. Between 1970 and 2002 these expenditures per capita grew at almost twice the rate of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in 10 countries studied: Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.