The responses here are pointing out structural problems in the industry, but I think this potentially misses a larger point: this article shows stats tracking h

The responses here are pointing out structural problems in the industry, but I think this potentially misses a larger point: this article shows stats tracking healthcare spending without accounting for healthcare needed. Yes, price discrimination, lack of pricing transparency, excessive administration costs, etc all add to spending. But at the same time we know that a lot of chronic diseases are increasingly common, that we have a large number of aging boomers, and that new, effective but expensive drugs (e.g. semaglutide) are being prescribed to both people that need them and perhaps some that "need" them, so there are simultaneously good reasons to expect healthcare spending to go up. If we can't track both the price and the care delivered, we can't really see if the efficiency of care delivery is getting worse (though it probably is). If we don't have metrics that compare care delivered to care required, we can't tell if we're failing to care for our population ("Bob needs X but can't get it because he can't afford it") or over-prescribing and testing ("Alice may not need Y but her GP put her on it to cover bases"). The system is broken. The players are corrupt. But measuring spending only does not really illuminate the issues.