The country’s biggest pharmacy benefit management service, Express Scripts, landed over $100 billion, and pharmaceutical company Pfizer collected over $50 billion. McKesson, the largest drug distributor in the US, earned revenues of over $120 billion in 2013. While the largest segment of those expenditures- about 32 percent-goes to hospitals, it’s pharmaceutical corporations, as well as their distributors and benefit management services, whose earnings are the most concentrated. According to the California HealthCare Foundation, total healthcare spending is projected to hit $3.1 trillion this year, an amount that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services expect will climb approximately 6 percent per year from 2015 through 2023. In fact, the US spends more on healthcare than any other country.

Though the US economy is still struggling to recover from the recession, spending on healthcare is on the rise. But while this expansion of coverage is a boon to the many who lacked sufficient access to medical treatments and services, it draws attention to questions that cut to the heart of healthcare reform: To what extent is our consumption of healthcare extraneous, and to what extent is it harmful? A Gallup poll recently found that the adult uninsured rate fell from 17.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 to 13.4 percent in the second quarter of 2014, the lowest level in six years. Despite the political mudslinging that continues to erupt at mere mention of the Affordable Care Act, it’s clear that the law has opened up the healthcare system to millions of Americans.

Overtreated by Shannon Brownlee