The cold, hard truth about health care costs

Canada has a single-payer health care system in which the government foots the bill for all medical costs. Great Britain has socialized medicine. That means the government is not only the only insurer, but it also employs all the doctors and nurses and runs all the hospitals. Yet, in spite of that, as measured against our overall economy, the U.S. government pays more in health care costs than either of those two nations. Not only that, the private sector costs are even greater. We spend 16 percent of our gross domestic product in health care. No other country in the world spends more than 12 percent. But there might be a way to remedy this, although it’s definitely not the Republican’s way — they would only make an untenable situation worse.