Health care may be broken, but it doesn’t have to be

Follow Us Get the newsletter The exceptionally high cost of American health care sometimes seems like an immutable law of nature. Like gravity, people, businesses and government feel powerless to escape its force. But the ever-growing economic burden of getting and staying well isn't quite so fundamental. Forty years ago, health-care spending in the U.S. looked similar to spending in other rich countries. In the decades since, it's gotten both more expensive and less efficient. As we pour more  money into medical care, America has lagged other countries' gains in life expectancy. This season on the Prognosis podcast, we tell the story of how the $4 trillion American health-care system got to this point, and what some people are trying to do about it. Download it here on Apple devices, and here on Android.—John Tozzi Here's what else we're watching: Care crunch. At least 30 U.S. hospitals entered bankruptcy last year, leaving many sick and injured people with nowhere to seek treatment. Adding to hospitals' headaches: Election-year debates over health policy. Pricing perils. Sanofi and Amgen's new heart drugs seemed like sure-fire hits that could help millions of people. Instead, they turned out to be flops. What went wrong? Declining deaths. Big advances in the treatment of lung and other tumors led to the largest-ever one-year decline in cancer deaths in 2017, a slide of 2.2%. Lung-cancer mortality declined 4.3% annually from 2013 to 2017.  Talc talk. A study of more than 250,000 women found that those who used talc or other personal-hygiene powders weren't significantly more likely to develop ovarian cancer—a potential boost for J&J in its talc legal battles. Got this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it every Thursday by clicking here.  We want to hear from you. If you have feedback, questions or potential story ideas, reach out to me at jtozzi2@bloomberg.net   Like Bloomberg's Prognosis? Subscribe to Bloomberg.com. You'll get our unmatched global news coverage and two premium daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close, and much, much more. See our limited-time introductory offer. Download the Bloomberg app: It's available for iOS and Android. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more.   You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Prognosis newsletter. Unsubscribe | Bloomberg.com | Contact Us Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022