The latest TIME cover story includes a sidebar titled ?Five Truths About Health Care in America.? The first two truths are ?The U.S. spends far more on health care than any other nation,? and ?Yet the U.S. is not healthier for the money.?
Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger made the same basic point during her recent John Locke Foundation Headliner presentation and in an interview with Carolina Journal Radio:
Health care is a major issue for our economy, and there are two parts of it that will command attention. ? One of them is that our health-care costs make us globally uncompetitive. We spend 17 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] on health care. Countries with whom we compete spend 10 percent. We cannot point to quality excesses in our health-care system that would justify the enormously higher amount that we spend.
