Healthcare spending has been growing at an unsustainable rate.
In 2014, we spent $9,523 per person on healthcare which is up from $4,878 per person in 2000 and $2,854 per person in 1990.1 This growth has dramatically outpaced inflation and now accounts for 17.5% of GDP.2
This translates to rising insurance premiums, deductibles, and medical debt which in turn increase financial pressure on families that are already struggling to get by.3 A recent poll by the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one in five people with health insurance has had problems paying their medical bills requiring them to use up their savings, sell assets, and borrow money at high interest rates.4 For those without insurance, half had similar struggles.
A major driver of these increasing costs is technological innovation which accounts for between 30% and 50% of healthcare cost growth.5 As Nicholas Bagley, Amitabh Chandra, and Austin Frakt explain in a discussion paper written for the Brookings Institute, there are few countervailing forces against endlessly rising prices in medical treatments.6
Toward Health 