re: #74 Belafon

Just pointing out that it would be a lot easier to switch our health care if we were at 5% of GDP rather than 17%. 1/6th of our economy is huge.

One big part of our health care costs:

Total prescription sales in the United States in the 2015 calendar year were $419.4 billion, which was 11.7% higher than sales in 2014.

ajhp.org

And, no big surprise—direct to consumer drug advertising skyrocketed from 2012-2015

Ad spending soared more than 60 percent in the last four years, hitting $5.2 billion last year…

Increasingly, critics are expressing concern that expenditures on advertising drive up the price of drugs.

They’re frustrated, too, when patients insist on getting the brand-name medication they’ve seen on TV, though other drugs might be more effective or less expensive, or both. Prescription drugs accounted for nearly 17 percent of total health care spending in 2015, up from about 7 percent in the 1990s, due in large part to rising prices for brand-name treatments, new federal data show.

Such concerns have prompted the American Medical Association to call for a ban on direct-to-consumer advertising.

statnews.com