http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8948/01-31-HealthTestimony.pdf
Figure 1 demonstrates that per-capita spending on healthcare has grown from $1,000 to over $6,000 (when adjusted for inflation and measured in 2005 dollars) from 1965 to 2005, and total healthcare spending has grown from $250 Billion to over $2 Trillion in the same timeframe (when adjusted for inflation and measured in 2005 dollars).
Figure 3 demonstrates that healthcare represented 5% of GDP in 1965 and represented 15% of GDP in 2005
U.S. health care system.3 Advances in medical science have made available to patients and physicians a wealth of new medical therapies, many unheard of in even the relatively recent past. Some medical advances permit the treatment of previously untreatable conditions, introducing new categories of spending. Others, relative to older modes of treatment, improve medical outcomes at added cost, expanding existing spending. Available empirical estimates suggest that approximately half of all long-term growth in health care spending has been associated with the expanded capabilities of medicine brought about by technologicaladvances.
Realistically, a national healthcare system does nothing to control the costs associated with the largest factor to the cost explosion in healthcare. Now, there are two areas of massive expense that account for more than 90% of all healthcare costs (regardless of who delivers the service); bureaucracy and preventable illnesses. If people focused as much effort in arguing how to eliminate bureaucracy and preventable illnesses as they do in arguing who should pay for healthcare we would probably be able to reduce the cost of healthcare to a level where it doesn’t matter who pays for it.
