People in the United States spend more on healthcare than residents of any other wealthy country, even though the nation still records some of the weakest health results.
Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development show that U.S. healthcare spending was nearly $14,900 per person in 2024, about two and a half times the average across OECD countries.
A separate Commonwealth Fund review of 10 affluent nations placed the United States at the bottom overall, including measures such as life expectancy and preventable deaths.
Healthcare now takes up a larger and larger share of the American economy, increasing the strain on families, employers and public budgets. More than $5 trillion is spent on healthcare each year in the United States, equal to about 18% of gross domestic product. By comparison, health care made up only 7% of GDP in 1970.
As that share keeps rising, more national resources go to hospitals, doctors, prescription drugs, insurance and other medical costs, leaving less for housing, education, infrastructure and other priorities.
Federal forecasts indicate the burden could grow even more. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that health spending will climb from $5.3 trillion in 2024 to almost $9 trillion by 2034, reaching 20.6% of the U.S. economy. In other words, more than one out of every five dollars spent in the country would go to health care.
Researchers at Yale University say the country could cut costs by hundreds of billions of dollars without completely overhauling the health care system.
Yale economist Zack Cooper, who directs the university's Health Care Affordability Lab, has helped identify 23 targeted reforms that researchers estimate could together lower annual health spending by about $450 billion.
The effort, known as 1% Steps for Health Care Reform, suggests changes such as reducing unnecessary nursing home care, widening access to childhood vaccinations and ending duplicate health care payments.
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