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TOO BIG TO HEAL  
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Helen Santoro, Joel Warner
December 23, 2025
The Lever [[link removed]]

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_ The U.S. economy is growing ever more reliant on the health care
crisis. _

, The Lever

 

America’s health care spending is so out of control that the
country’s economy is becoming dependent on it.

According to a report
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released today by the U.S. Department of Commerce, economic growth
swelled
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the third quarter of 2025. While that’s theoretically
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good news, an ever-larger share of that consumer spending is devoted
to health care costs: Over the previous three months, expenditures on
health care increased more than on any other goods or services. Health
care spending, in fact, contributed more to the country’s gross
domestic product growth than any other personal expenses. 

The second largest contributor to economic growth was an increase in
consumer spending on nondurable goods — which, according
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the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “was mainly in prescription
drugs.”

And these spending increases came before insurance premium bills are
set to skyrocket
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next year for both individual
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and employer-sponsored
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health plans.

The rising cost of medical care, which includes medical procedures,
nursing-home services, insurance, drugs, and medical equipment, has
long outpaced
[[link removed](CPI-U)%20for%20medical%20care%20and%20for%20all%20goods%20and%20services,%20January%202000%20-%20June%202024]
general inflation. Currently, health care spending represents about 18
percent of the U.S. economy
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meaning that roughly one out of every five dollars spent goes toward
health care costs — more than what Americans spend on groceries or
housing
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In 1960, it was only 5 percent
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Credit: Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker
[[link removed](CPI-U)%20for%20medical%20care%20and%20for%20all%20goods%20and%20services,%20January%202000%20-%20June%202024]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people in the U.S. are far outspending
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individuals in other high-income nations on health care-related costs.
On average, other wealthy nations spend about half as much per person
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on health care as the U.S. — even though American taxpayers
subsidize
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the development costs of many of the drugs other countries pay far
less for. 

No wonder total U.S. medical debt has surpassed $200 billion
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with one in 12 U.S. adults in debt over health care bills.

Medical spending is also fueling federal debt. According to the U.S.
Government Accountability Office, the costs of federal health programs
like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program
accounted for roughly 31 percent
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of all federal program spending in 2024. 

The solution is health care reform
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— reining in drug
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and procedure
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costs, cracking down on health care consolidation
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cutting out price-gouging
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corporate middlemen, and ending systematic Medicare abuses, such as
those common
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in for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. And, of course, moving forward
with wildly popular
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Medicare for All. 

But here’s the rub: As ever more of the country’s economy becomes
tied to medical spending, it becomes increasingly difficult to
challenge the corporations and reform the system that are consuming
all of that money. As the Brookings Institution warned
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way back in 2008, “The high and rising cost of expanding coverage is
a major reason why previous attempts to achieve universal coverage
have not succeeded, and why reform will keep getting harder if we use
the same approaches as in the past.”

Now, nearly 20 years later, has our health care system finally become
too big to heal?

Each day, The Lever ’s staff tirelessly investigates, researches,
writes, fact-checks, and edits stories that hold the powerful
accountable in ways corporate media will not. All of that work is
supported by readers who become paid supporters.

* Health Care
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* Medicare for All
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