The engineer's role in averting the pending health care cost crisis

Abstract

The cost of health care in the US has grown to 15 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). As a fraction of GDP, our health care costs are between 1.5 and 2 times that of the rest of the industrialized world. We are annually spending almost four times as much on health care as we spend on national defense and about 1.5 times what we spend on education. The average US expenditure on health care is over $4000 per person. On average, those over 65 years of age were charged $12000 per person for services and those over 85 years of age were charged about $20000 per person. Cost projections suggest that when the baby boomers reach their late 70s and 80s prior to the middle of the 21st century, US health care costs will soar to 25 percent of GDP. Health care spending is slowly eroding national savings, and as the population ages, this problem will continue to escalate. Unless the US Health care cost problem is solved, it can become the albatross that will bring our economy to its knees. ABET has set an objective for the future education of students that engineers should be aware of social problems and should assume a responsibility for their role in solving those problems. We propose here a series of remedies the engineering community should initiate to solve our largest looming crisis: the cost of health care.