evidence: The United States has one of the highest costs of healthcare in the world. In 2022, U.S. healthcare spending reached $4.5 trillion, which averages to $13,493 per person. By comparison, the average cost of healthcare per person in other wealthy countries is less than half as much. While the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the trend in rising healthcare costs, such spending has been increasing long before COVID-19 began. Relative to the size of the economy, healthcare costs have increased over the past few decades, from 5 percent of GDP in 1962 to 17 percent in 2022. [...] Prices are another significant driver of healthcare spending in the United States; the cost of healthcare services typically grow faster than the cost of other goods and services in the economy. In the past 20 years, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) for all items — the average change in prices paid by urban consumers for various goods and services — has grown at an average of 2.6 percent per year while the CPI-U for medical care has grown at an average rate of 3.1 percent per year. Over the past two years or so, however, the CPI-U for medical care has been lower than the overall CPI-U. In addition to historically high levels of overall inflation, analysts point to wage increases for health workers and delays in observable price increases, due to healthcare prices being set in advance, as possible reasons for that trend.