One of the actuaries where I worked wrote a paper or gave a talk somewhere that I found very thought-provoking. In the future, he said, healthcare costs might rise to be as high as 50% or even 90% of GDP, and there would be nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It would simply reflect our evolving priorities of valuing good health more than anything else in our lives.
If this is a real person giving a real talk that was taken seriously by other professionals, then that is terrifying (it's already ~20% GDP and climbing).
Why necessarily? If GDP grew overnight by 10x, and 90% of that went to health care, and as a result (hypothetically) we lived to an average life span of 300, would that not be a positive result?
How much of the increased spending do we expect to be higher prices for the same care, and how much of it do we expect to be new types of care? Thus far there has been a lot of the former.
I think the point is that there is no intrinsically "right" level of health care spending. Spending 50% of income on health care would surely require some trade-offs, but that might be worth it, at least to some people.
I don't think the human costs are the major source of inefficiencies in US healthcare. Plenty of countries have much better health for much less expense, and they're not doing it through automation. My understanding is that too many players in the US system are incentivized to administer as much healthcare as possible (which may well not produce the greatest health), and at the highest possible price.
If this is a real person giving a real talk that was taken seriously by other professionals, then that is terrifying (it's already ~20% GDP and climbing).