US Per Capita Health Spending 2.5 Times OECD Average
This is hardly new, but data from the OECD illustrates how far out of line spending on healthcare is in the United States.
Total health spending accounted for 16.0% of GDP in the United States in 2007, by far the highest share in the OECD, according to OECD Health Data 2009. Following the United States were France, Switzerland and Germany, which allocated respectively 11.0%, 10.8% and 10.4% of their GDP to health. The OECD average was 8.9% in 2007.
The United States also ranks far ahead of other OECD countries in terms of total health spending per capita, with spending of $7,290, almost two-and-a-half times greater than the OECD average of $2,964 in 2007.
The high US spending is not accompanied by comparatively better health:
- Life expectancy at birth in the US increased by 8.2 years between 1960 and 2006, which is less than the increase of almost 15 years in Japan, or 9.4 years in Canada. In 2006, life expectancy in the US stood at 78.1 years, almost one year below the OECD average of 79.0 years.
- Infant mortality rates have fallen greatly over the past few decades, but not as much as in most other OECD countries. It stood at 6.7 deaths per 1 000 live births in 2006, above the OECD average of 4.9.
- The obesity rate among US adults (34.3% in 2006) is the highest in OECD countries.
- One positive trend: the proportion of daily smokers among US adults has been cut by more than half over the past 25 years, falling from 33.5% in 1980 to 15.4% in 2007. This is the lowest rate among OECD countries after Sweden.
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