MedPage Today May 8, 2021
— U.S. healthcare needs to stop preying on its people
After the coronavirus pandemic and our stalled national economy, it is America’s runaway, intransigent, and immensely influential healthcare system that most urgently begs for the Biden administration’s close attention. The excesses that characterize U.S. healthcare — stratospheric unit pricing and wildly exorbitant overtreatment — are deeply entrenched, and make it an increasingly unaffordable burden; one that threatens our national economic security and our global competitive standing, diverting precious resources from other vital needs like education, transportation, and infrastructure.
For decades, healthcare inflation has risen at a multiple of general inflation so consistently that we now assume that’s the way it should be. In 2020, we spent about $11,100 per person...