The US Health Spending Problem Is Still About Prices Irene Papanicolas Jonathan Cylus Luca Lorenzoni

https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/us-health-spending-problem-still-prices For more than two decades, debates about why US health care spending is so high have been shaped by the insight articulated by Gerard Anderson, Uwe Reinhardt and Peter Hussey: that the United States does not use more health care than other high-income countries but pays much higher prices for it. The original “It’s the Prices, Stupid” argument was fundamentally about price levels, not price growth. That central insight remains as true today as when it was first articulated: across services, drugs, and inputs, the United States consistently pays substantially higher prices than its peers for comparable services, drugs, and inputs.