Health care system-related statistics in the United States yield more worrying results with each passing year, experts warn. The strain of insurances forces people to benefit from only limited health care, and prompts physicians to take every precautionary step possible, in order to avoid lawsuits for malpractice. This translates into the highest medical costs in the world, although the system itself is not that strong and is surpassed by European ones constantly.
 

Annual expenses on the health budget surpass $2 trillion, which virtually makes this sector about 4 times larger than, say, national defense. Under these conditions, you would expect the level of health care to be highly effective, but that's not the case, considering that only one sixth of US citizens are insured. The resilience to change medical insurance companies bring forth, while spending millions of dollars on lobbyists, is mind-boggling, seeing how, at the same time, countless people are dying because the same companies won't pay their expenses.
 

The whole paperwork process associated with the system takes up about 31 percent of all expenditures, seeing how doctors have to fill countless forms all the time. In more civilized countries, the level of forms has been reduced to a minimum, and expenses drastically reduced.
 

Predictions say that the health system will require about $4 trillion by 2015, an unsustainable level that will prompt its downfall. That much money accounts for about 20 percent of US gross domestic product, leaving all other sectors of the economy to manage with the rest of 80 percent.
 

"Americans prize individual choice and resist limiting care. We believe that if doctors can treat very ill patients aggressively and keep every moment of people in the last stages of life under medical care, then they should. We choose to hold these values. Consequently, we choose to have a more expensive system than Europe or Canada," says UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine professor of clinical neurology, Dr. Marc Nuwer.
 

"Does a fancy electric wheelchair cost $500 or $50,000? Most doctors have no clue. We need to give physicians feedback about the dollar signs behind their orders," he adds. An overall rethinking of American general values is in order, the expert thinks, if the country is to be able to provide high-quality care for its citizens. And a free, public health care system is the best way to go about accomplishing this.