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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

Can someone clarify this, because the article does an incredibly shitty job of doing this? Is it talking about an average government spending of $10,345 over the life of each person in the U.S.?

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No. The number also includes money spent by individual Americans, and it is per year, not over the life of (that would be incredibly low, at less than half a dollar a day)

Government spending is about a third of that, it seems (http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_health_care_spending_...)

According to the article that fraction is increasing:

"Medicare and Medicaid are expected to grow more rapidly than private insurance as the baby-boom generation ages. By 2025, government at all levels will account for nearly half of health care spending, 47 percent."

(Note that that is "at all levels". I guess that includes expenditures by states)

"National health expenditures will hit $3.35 trillion this year, which works out to $10,345 for every man, woman and child."

This is over $10,000 per person on health care costs in one year.

Yes but as the article points out the distribution is highly skewed: "About 5 percent of the population — those most frail or ill — accounts for nearly half the spending in a given year, according to a separate government study. Meanwhile, half the population has little or no health care costs, accounting for 3 percent of spending."

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