Healthcare in the world, Norway, Switzerland and the United States are the world’s three biggest healthcare spenders – paying $9,715 per person (9.6% of GDP), $9,276 per person (11.5% of GDP), and $9,146 per person (17.1% of GDP) respectively.

But other countries’ health systems are managing to achieve similar or better results for far less. Hong Kong spends $1,716 per person (6% of GDP), Israel $2,599 per person (7.2% of GDP) and Singapore $2,507 (4.6% of GDP). These countries, like Norway and Switzerland, have life expectancies of between 82 and 83 years. By comparison, life expectancy in the US is 79.

For most people, the rising cost of health insurance premiums lies at the center of concerns about rising healthcare costs. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), the average annual premium for family healthcare coverage rose nearly 5% in 2018 to $19,616.3

The average increase in premium costs in 2018 for people on a private plan or a healthcare exchange was $201.3 The two most-cited reasons for these increases were government policy and lifestyle changes.

Government programs like Medicare and Medicaid have increased overall demand for medical services—resulting in higher prices. In addition, as noted above, increases in the incidence of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease have had a direct impact on increases in the cost of medical care. Chronic and mental health conditions are responsible for 90% of healthcare costs and sixty percent of all Americans have a chronic illness.

Thanks to a lack of transparency and underlying inefficiency, healthcare in the world , it’s difficult to know the actual cost of healthcare. Most people know the cost of care is going up, but with few details and complicated hard to decipher invoices, it’s not easy to know what they are paying for. The Wall Street Journal reported about one hospital that discovered it was charging more than $50,000 for knee-replacement surgery that only cost between $7,300 and $10,550.7 If hospitals don’t know the true cost of a procedure, patients may have difficulty shopping around. When it comes to overall transparency, a New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) survey showed that only about 17% of care professionals believed their institutions had either “mature” or “very mature” transparency