The US spends roughly 17% of GDP on healthcare, according to the OECD; most European countries spend less than 12% of GDP.
Higher quality-adjusted US healthcare prices contribute relatively more to the extra US spending than does the combination of higher quantity and quality of US care (interpreting quantity and quality to reflect both greater American healthcare needs due to underlying population health and the delivery of more or better healthcare services to Americans).
The biggest reason for the measured slowdown in US productivity growth since the mid-2000s is that productivity increases have gone mismeasured, including new and better products and services that have been insufficiently captured by real output data.
