Michael Tanner writes:
There is no doubt that Americans spend more on health care than any other country. But why is that necessarily a bad thing? There is no “right” amount to spend on health care or anything else. The United States spends more on athletic shoes than any other country. No one speaks of the athletic shoes crisis.
That's precisely correct. The question isn't how much we're spending on health care, but how much we're getting from health care. Indeed, it's not clear to me that there's any saner use of money than effective medicines and longevity treatments. Now, whether our money is purchasing effective medicines and longevity treatments, and whether it's doing so at a low price, is somewhat unclear (well, not the low price part -- we're clearly not getting any bargains). But if we were spending 33% of our GDP on health care and thought we were reaping benefits that made the expenditures worthwhile, then the outlays are just fine. There's no mystical numeral above which spending is too high, though some would have you believe otherwise. You just need to be getting enough utility from the product that it's worth the expense.
