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Can someone clarify this, because the article does an incredibly shitty job of doing this? Is it talking about an average government spending of $10,345 over th

• soccerdave 10y ago
  "National health expenditures will hit $3.35 trillion this year, which works out to $10,345 for every man, woman and child." This is over $10,000 per person on health care costs in one year.
  • muzz 10y ago
    Yes but as the article points out the distribution is highly skewed: "About 5 percent of the population — those most frail or ill — accounts for nearly half the spending in a given year, according to a separate government study. Meanwhile, half the population has little or no health care costs, accounting for 3 percent of spending."
• Someone 10y ago
  No. The number also includes money spent by individual Americans, and it is per year, not over the life of (that would be incredibly low, at less than half a dollar a day) Government spending is about a third of that, it seems (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_health_care_spending_10.html http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_health_care_spending_...) According to the article that fraction is increasing: "Medicare and Medicaid are expected to grow more rapidly than private insurance as the baby-boom generation ages. By 2025, government at all levels will account for nearly half of health care spending, 47 percent." (Note that that is "at all levels". I guess that includes expenditures by states)