A starting point for some data

Believe it or not, fairly dispassionate studies of the health care system in America, as well as elsewhere, have been done. Whether they're influencing the debate or not is an interesting question. But for those of us who want to be students of the issue, they seem like a good place to start.

For my own starting point, I've chosen the reports prepared by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. You find several of them linked from the McKinsey Global Institute's health care landing page. (Free registration required — please don't let this put you off). Pay special attention to the report titled Accounting for the cost of U.S. health care: A new look at why Americans spend more.

I'll be going over that report in some detail as I make my way through it, but I'll share the key finding here for starters:

The United States spends significantly more than many comparable countries on health care. Whereas countries in the peer group McKinsey examined seem to spend 6-10% of their per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care, the US spends almost 16%. As one of the highest per-capita GDP countries, the health care expenditure is larger in absolute terms as well, making the US by far biggest per-capita health spender in the group.

Conclusion: we spend much more per capita on health care than our (McKinsey-selected) peer group.

Is that a bad thing? We'll turn to that topic shortly.