“How much does the U.S. spend on health care? This Institute of Medicine infographic explores waste in spending and opportunities for savings. The United States spends far more on health care than any other nation. In 2009, health care costs reached $2.5 trillion—nearly 17 percent of the GDP. Yet despite this spending, health outcomes in the U.S. are considerably below those in other countries. The Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care, with a grant from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, convened four meetings throughout 2009, engaging the nation’s leading cost and outcomes experts in exploring the causes of excess health costs and ways to address them. To estimate costs, discussions used a unique 6-domain analytic model—unneeded services, delivery inefficiencies, high prices, unnecessary administrative costs, missed prevention opportunities, and fraud—and focused on ways to reduce per capita health spending by 10 percent in ten years, while improving outcomes. The Healthcare Imperative: Lowering Costs and Improving Outcomes – Workshop Series Summary describes the workshop.”