That healthcare alone is dooming the U.S. economy is not news to Of Two Minds readers, as I have been covering the catastrophic consequences of our runaway healthcare system for the past decade.
 

Three charts crystallize the healthcare dynamics that are dooming the U.S. economy. The first depicts the runaway growth of healthcare costs--a rapid expansion that is a permanent feature of U.S. healthcare, regardless of which party is in office or what reforms are instituted.

This expansion of costs has many drivers, most of which result from the system's perverse incentives for fraud, overbilling, marginal treatments and defensive medicine.Technological and medical advances offer more options for treatment, and can push costs up--but advances can just as readily push costs down, too.
 

The primary drivers of rapidly increasing costs are:
 

1. The cartel/crony-capitalist structure of U.S. healthcare
 

2. Defensive medicine to stave off litigation
 

3. Profiteering from needless or ineffective tests, procedures and medications
 

4. Fraud and overbilling
 

5. The concentration of expenditures in a small sector of the population
 

6. America's inability and/or unwillingness to have an adult discussion over end-of-life care for the elderly.