US spends twice as much on health care as its peers

By Tami Luhby, CNN

Updated 6:02 AM ET, Tue January 8, 2019

(CNN) - Despite many efforts to rein in US health care costs in recent years, spending is still on the rise.

Americans spend more than twice as much on health care per person as their peers in developed nations, according to a new analysis from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It's not because people in the US use more medical services. Instead, it's because drugs cost more, doctors and nurses are paid better, hospital administration is more expensive and many medical services have higher price tags, the study found.

The new analysis -- an update of a well-known 2003 report by Princeton health care economist Uwe Reinhardt titled "It's the prices, stupid" -- found that the US remains an outlier when it comes to spending, which was $9,892 per person in 2016. That compares to a median of $4,033 for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in 2016 and to the $4,559 the US spent per person in 2000, adjusted for inflation.

Spending increased at an average rate of 2.8% annually in the US between 2000 and 2016, compared to the OECD median of 2.6%. This was driven in part by how much Americans shell out on drugs, which increased 3.8% per year, compared to a median of 1.1% for OECD nations.

"In spite of all the efforts in the US to control health spending over the past 25 years, the story remains the same," said lead author Gerard Anderson, a Johns Hopkins professor. "The US remains the most expensive because of the prices the US pays for health services."

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/08/politics/health-care-spending/index.html