American citizens spend more of their national income on health than anywhere else but the United States has not yet achieved full insurance coverage of its population…
Americans consumed $7,290 of health services per person in 2007, almost two-and-a-half times more than the OECD average of just under $3,000.
Americans spend more than twice as much as relatively rich European countries such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
…even the government spends more on health than nearly anywhere else.
The United States spent 16% of its national income (GDP) on health in 2007. This is by far the highest share in the OECD and more than seven percentage points higher than the average of 8.9% in OECD countries. Even France, Switzerland and Germany, the countries which, apart from the United States, spend the greatest proportion of national income on health, spent over 5 percentage points of GDP less: respectively 11.0%, 10.8% and 10.4% of their GDP. However, almost all OECD countries, with the exception of the US, and the middle-income countries, Mexico and Turkey, have full insurance coverage of their population.
And.... This level of spending is nothing to do with aging and health status
One factor which cannot explain why the US spends more than other countries is population aging. Many European countries and Japan have been aging much more rapidly than the United States. In Europe, 16.7% of the population is over 65 years old, and 21.5% in Japan compared with just 12.6% in the United States.
Population aging can explain part of the growth in health expenditure over the past decade in the United States and elsewhere, it cannot explain why the United States spends more than other countries.
