Just a moment...

As a culture, we often ignore the fundamental causes of health and illness, and focus instead on how to fund drugs and surgery. Our health-care system really pays more attention to disease than to health. Of the $2.1 trillion spent in 2008 on medical care, ninety-five cents of every dollar was used to treat disease, not prevent it.4 • It is far eas

You’d be wise to spend only about $10 of your budget on medical care and spend more on improving social and environmental factors such as substandard housing, job stress, poverty, discrimination, and dangerous neighborhoods — what experts often call the “social determinants of health.” When we think about what really shapes our health, medical care

• The US is the only OECD country without some form of universal health coverage, resulting in the US spending twice as much (per capita) than other OECD countries.


• Despite this higher spending, most data shows health outcomes in the U.S. to be worse than other OECD countries, even after adjusting for nuances like above-average obesity.


• A 2020 study by

Inadequate attention to and investment in services that address the broader determinants of health is the unnamed culprit behind why the United States spends so much on health care but continues to lag behind in health outcomes.

Spurred by private sector confidence in a growing and profitable health care market, the United States has favored investments in health care over social services. According to the numbers, this inequity may result in poorer health than might be attained by recalibrating the balance of health and social spending.

Despite spending more on health care and K–12 education per capita than any other developed country, health care outcomes and student achievement also rank in the middle or worse internationally. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy among its peer countries, and among the thirty-five OECD countries American chil