> Loss column: Insurance rate increases still bonkers and unsustainable. [...] Healthcare spending in general still stupid-high and getting higher.
Worse, nobody seems to have any idea how to fix that.
For the problem of high costs we can at least take a look at what other first world countries do for some idea. Most are spending well under 1/2 of what we spend.
For the problem of increasing costs though we can't look at others because they too have increasing costs comparable to the rate of increase of US costs.
For example, in 1980 the per capita health costs in the UK, France, and the US were (in USD) 385, 659, and 1036.
And here is what the costs were in those countries in 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2018, divided by that country's 1980 costs:
Year UK FR US
1990 2.0 2.2 2.6
2000 4.1 4.1 4.4
2010 7.5 6.1 7.7
2018 10.6 7.5 10.2
Here are a few countries and the ratio of their 2018 to 2000 costs:
2.1 Germany
1.8 France
2.0 Canada
1.7 Italy
2.6 Japan
2.6 UK
2.3 US
I used 2018 instead of 2020 because I did this calculation a few years ago, and 2018 was the latest data at the time. My source now has data through 2022.
If anyone wants to do this for other years, or for other countries, here's how to get the data:
1. Go to https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
2. Uncheck "latest data available". This enables the year range selector control.
3. Use the year range selector to expand the range to cover the years you are interested in. They have 1970-2022.
4. The chart will then show the total costs in US dollars/capita by year of health care in 50 countries. You can use the "Highlighted Countries" drop down to narrow that to select a "background" of OECD, EU, Euro Area, G7, or G20 if you want. You can then add individual countries using the list on the left of that dialog.
5. You can change what is shown from total to government/compulsory, voluntary, or out-of-pocket and you can change the measure from per capita to % of GDP.