In a 2002 fact sheet, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (or AHRQ, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) reported: The United States spends a larger share of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care than any other major industrialized country. Expenditures for health care represent nearly one-seventh of the Nation's GDP, and they continue to be one of the fastest growing components of the Federal budget. In 1960, for example, health care expenditures accounted for about 5 percent of the GDP; by 2000, that figure had grown to more than 13 percent. [Italics added.] In February 2010, the New York Times reported: With the health care tab for last year coming to $2.5 trillion, health care spending now represents 17.3 percent of the nation's gross domestic product -- a 1.1 percent bigger portion of the nation's economy than in 2008. This represents the biggest one-year expansion of health care's share of the economy since the federal government...(Read Full Post)