The United States now spends more than $14,000 per person each year on health care—roughly twice what other wealthy nations pay. Yet its outcomes remain stubbornly average or worse. The paradox at the heart of American medicine is not that people use more care, but that each doctor’s visit, hospital stay, prescription drug, and insurance transaction costs dramatically more than anywhere else in the developed world.
A growing body of international research points to the same conclusion: the U.S. doesn’t suffer from too little innovation or too much illness, but from a system built on high prices, heavy administrative overhead, and fragmented policy choices. The result is a country that spends more than any of its peers while struggling to deliver the kind of reliable, equitable, and cost-efficient care they take for granted.