$10 Million a Minute, and Half the Doctor Visits: Americans Pay More for Less Care

Read this slowly. In 2024 the United States spent $5.3 trillion on healthcare.

That's more than $14.4 billion a day. More than $10 million a minute. By the time you finish this paragraph, another few million dollars have gone out the door.

KFF Health News laid out the federal government's own numbers this week, and one sentence stopped me. Health spending per person rose to $15,474 in 2024, "not necessarily because we're sicker, but because of increased prices."

Then the next line. According to the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, Americans get half as many in-person doctor consultations per person as people in peer countries.

Half the visits. The highest bill on earth. KFF said it in 6 words: "we pay more for less care."

I'm not shocked. Every doctor who has spent a morning on prior authorizations knows where some of that money goes. It goes to the billing department, the claims processor, the coding consultant, and the people on the other end of the phone who deny the claim the billing department filed. None of them see patients. All of them get paid.

Picture the system as a kitchen faucet left running. We keep arguing about who pays the water bill.

KFF makes the same point more politely. Many federal proposals, they write, "focus on shifting costs from one funder to another rather than lowering them." The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act moved more of the cost onto households. Restoring the old ACA subsidies would move it back toward government. Either way the water keeps running. Healthcare was 18% of the economy in 2024, and the government projects 20% by 2032.

Harvard's Michael Chernew put it best: "We'll all end up with healthcare and no clothes or houses or cars."

So where do you turn the faucet off?

Start with the part of the bill that's pure friction. In direct care, a patient pays their doctor a flat monthly fee. No claim. No code. No denial. No billing department. The time that used to go to paperwork goes to the patient, which is how you get longer visits and a doctor who answers a text on Saturday. That's more care, not less, and it costs less because nobody in the middle is skimming.

Then go after the price. Many direct care offices sell generic meds and labs near wholesale, with the price posted before you buy. When the price is visible, it falls. When it hides behind a claim, it climbs.

I am not anti-insurance. Hospital care is still the biggest line in that $5.3 trillion, and you need a policy for the night you end up there. Keep insurance for the wreck.

But the everyday stuff, the visit, the lab, the blood pressure pill, never needed to run through the most expensive plumbing in the world.

$10 million a minute is not a law of nature. It's a faucet. Somebody just has to reach over and turn it.

Source: Lydia Zuraw and Renuka Rayasam, KFF Health News, "Digging Into the Money Behind the US Healthcare System" (Oct. 23, 2026): kffhealthnews.org/health-care-costs/money-us-healthcare-system-gdp-economy-nhe-prices-graphics/

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