Introducing Prognosis Season 4: America's Broken Health-Care Costs

John Tozzi (0:00)

American health care is the most expensive in the world. Yet for all the money we put into it, Americans are sicker and die younger than people in other wealthy countries.

SPEAKER_2 (0:11)

In every country, life expectancy is going up, in every country they're spending more, but per dollar, how much is life expectancy going up?

And in the US., it's a lot less than in other countries.

John Tozzi (0:23)

I'm John Tozzi, a health care reporter at Bloomberg News. On the new season of Prognosis, we look at how the American health care system got to this point, and how its hefty price tag forces people to make difficult decisions in their everyday lives.

SPEAKER_3 (0:37)

We were looking to buy a house, so we had been saving up for a down payment, and we were thinking, like, well, one uncovered ER visit could wipe out a significant chunk of what we have as a down payment for a house.

John Tozzi (0:52)

We'll also look at what some people are trying to do to fix the system.

SPEAKER_2 (0:56)

Patients didn't feel fulfilled. Physicians didn't feel fulfilled.

And then we got to a point where, after they changed how we were practicing and pushed more volume and so forth, we just said we had had enough.

John Tozzi (1:14)

The new season of Prognosis is out now. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.