ABSTRACT
Mr. Pulvermacher is singing about his ailments and the costs of curing those ailments. He sings that his “bills for only pills alone would chill you to the bone.” Many could sympathize with Mr. Pulvermacher. Health care in the U.S. and across the world is expensive. In the U.S. in 2015, health care spending was almost $10,000 per person, or 17.8% of the country’s GDP. 1 Economists have different views over what this indicates. Harvard health economist David Cutler argues that there are three reasons for high health care costs: that U.S. citizens pay too much on health care administration, pay more for drugs and medical equipment than consumers in other countries, and that U.S. citizens consume more health care than people in other countries.
