US Healthcare Costs Out of Control

Is it just me, or is anyone else flabbergasted by the cost of US healthcare in 2005? $2 Trillion spent...boy, sounds like the US is a sickly lot.

Healthcare has and always will be a big business. The numbers in the article above (click on post title to go to CNN article), and continuing spending on healthcare doesn't seem to be making everyone better.

Just think...if everyone cut out 10% of their healthcare requirements, $200 billion could be used elsewhere. This won't happen though, as we try to continue to "make ourselves healthier". Spending that much on healthcare with no improvements in the overall health of the US, just goes to show that the primary interest of the healthcare system is to make money, not improve the health of the nation.

Rather than giving in to the demands of healthcare professionals for more funding, benchmarks and performance criteria should be set. Only when the healthcare professionals are held accountable to their spending, will things improve.