Healthcare in America. The U.S. spent $2.472 trillion on healthcare last year, according to a paper out today in the journal Health Affairs. That’s $282 million an hour. Health spending as a percent of GDP -- a key metric that shows how much of all U.S. spending goes to healthcare -- rose from 16.2% in 2008 to 17.3% in 2009, far higher than any other industrialized country. That’s the largest one-year increase since 1960, when the feds started closely tracking national health expenditures.
via WSJ
Jay Parkinson, MD, blogs regularly at http://blog.jayparkinsonmd.com/