Wasteful Health Care Spending and Unknown Costs

Now that Halloween is behind us, Americans are faced with something far more frightening for the foreseeable future. The cost of health care is one of the scariest things facing all Americans and there is currently no viable solution to the monstrosity of Barack Obama’s Unaffordable Care Act. Congressional Republicans have been completely inept at getting any meaningful legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The extreme cost of health care and the spending involved is something recognized by nearly all policy experts. However, there is a chasm of disagreement between experts on how to address the problem. Those on the Left advocate for a single-payer system, while those on the Right advocate for a return to free-market solutions. With both sides arguing for completely different solutions, there seems to be little hope that anything meaningful will get accomplished.

That said, there are currently two primary problems with health care in America: wasteful spending on behalf of the federal government and the individual cost. We have known for decades that the federal government has a spending problem, and with health care taking up more than one-fifth of the economy, it should be no surprise that there is just as much wasteful spending with health care as there is with any other government function.

In particular, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, notes two facts that are worth highlighting:

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