Do We Spend Too Much (Ctd.)

Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt @IncidentalEcon and Incidental Economist blog have more on how much more we spend per capita on health care as compared to other nations. In the post link above, Aaron updates his estimates and adds in other countries....demonstrating it is not the mixture of control group countries picked; low and behold, we spend a lot on health care! Austin with a great post addressing the issue that just spending more doesn't mean it is necessarily too much, and some of the different ways to think about the 'how much should we spend?' question.

In short, you would expect the US to spend the most on health care per capita because we are roughly the richest nation in the world in per capita GDP terms (leaving out places like Monaco, etc.). No shock we spend the most.

The real question is what do we get for it? Over the next 30 years or so, we will have to learn to ruthlessly and methodically ask this question. Stop demonizing the simple asking of this question. Provide some answers to this question. And then decide what to do about it.