American healthcare is frankly - and I say this as an American - disgusting and infuriating. It needs to be re-structured from the ground up.
It is indeed infuriating.
The US is a huge outlier: we spend way more than other countries and don't even live as long.
There are other ways to measure it too, which is good to investigate, as it is a complicated subject.
Here's a HN relevant way to measure it: how much time does your average 5, 50, and 500 person company spend dealing with health insurance stuff?
The startup I worked for in Italy spent 0 time on it, because it's not relevant to the company at all. Of course, Italy has massive amounts of bureaucracy for other things, which more than make up for the lack of it in health care, but that's another story.
(Edit: small typo)
Then we have, Most of this marketing money is directed at the physicians who do the prescribing, rather than consumers. As Oliver pointed out, drug companies spent more than $3 billion a year marketing to consumers in the U.S. in 2012, but an estimated $24 billion marketing directly to health care professionals.
$27B in marketing but the graphic shows over $65B in R&D?