[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal
entities. The U.S. spends more on health care per person than any
other nation in the world.[1] Current estimates put U.S. health care
spending at approximately 15.2% of GDP, second only to the tiny
Marshall Islands among all United Nations member nations.[1] The
health share of GDP is expected to continue its historical upward
trend, reaching 19.5 percent of GDP by 2017.[2] In 2007 the U.S. spent
$2.26 trillion on health care, or $7,439 per person.[3]

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences and others, the U.S. is the only wealthy and industrialized
nation that does not have universal health care.[4][5] In the United
States, around 84.7% of citizens have some form of health insurance;
either through their employer (59.3%), purchased individually (8.9%),
or provided by government programs (27.8%; there is some overlap in
these figures).[6] Certain publicly-funded health care programs help
to provide for the elderly, disabled, children, veterans, and the
poor, and federal law mandates public access to emergency services
regardless of ability to pay. U.S. government programs accounted for
over 45% of health care expenditures, making the U.S. government the
largest insurer in the nation. Per capita spending on health care by
the U.S. government placed it among the top ten highest spenders among
United Nations member countries in 2004.[7]

Americans without health insurance coverage at some time during 2007
totaled about 15.3% of the population, or 45.7 million people.[6]
Health insurance costs are rising faster than wages or inflation, and
"medical causes" were cited by about half of bankruptcy filers in the
United States in 2001.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_..._United_States

Healthcare spending could approach $4.3 trillion in 2017, or nearly 20
percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

The report, which was published online, said that the annual growth in
healthcare spending is expected to outstrip both the growth in the
overall economy, estimated at 4.9 percent, and the rate of general
inflation, estimated at 2.4 percent.

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/story.cms?id=7688

Hm. They assumed a 4.9% gfrowth rate. Is that reasonable IYO, 2pid?