Experts agree that at least one-fourth of our spending on health care in the U.S. is wasted.
As we pause to take a breath after Congress failed to approve an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, it's a good time to reconsider what we really want to pay for in health care.
U.S. health care is the most expensive in the world, and we don't get our bang for the buck. The U.S. ranked dead last in a 2014 study by the Commonwealth Fund that compared health system performance in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K. Health care accounted for 17.8 percent of the U.S. GDP in 2015. Many experts agree that at least one-fourth of our spending on health care in the U.S. is “wasted,” meaning it adds no value for patients.
