The $4 Trillion Failure

Three organs. Four months in the hospital. Over $2 million in medical bills.

That’s what it cost Jacob Peters to survive the American healthcare system.

He almost didn’t.

It wasn’t rare cancer or freak trauma that nearly killed him. It was chronic inflammation, repeated misdiagnosis, and a system that treats symptoms after they erupt instead of identifying risks before they multiply.

Every test he needed existed. Every signal was there.

But nobody saw the full picture... because nobody was incentivized to.

Worst of all, Jacob’s experience is not unique.

Every day in the United States:

These aren’t edge cases.

They’re the default, consistent outcome of a system that waits for people to break, then bills them for the repairs.

Because the truth is, we don’t have a real healthcare system in America. We have a sickness billing machine. One that’s designed to keep you coming back as often (and as expensively) as possible.

The American healthcare system is broken.

And while most of the national conversation centers around spending more money on that system or rearranging its budgets, in this treatise, we’re going to slice it open, place a microscope on every decrepit organ, and demonstrate, with clarity and finality, that no amount of reform can turn this into the system we actually need.

It’s dying, just like the people who rely on it.

But more importantly, we’ll show what comes next: a vision for the future of healthcare that is personalized, preventative, and powerful enough to accomplish what no amount of money will ever achieve.

And we’ll start, like every competent investigation throughout history:

By following the money.

SECTION 1: The Dystopian Cost Spiral

The United States spent $5.3 trillion on healthcare in 2024. That’s nearly one out of every five dollars generated by the U.S. economy. It’s more than the GDP of Germany, the UK, and Canada... combined.

But the raw total isn’t even the most staggering number.

The U.S. spent $15,750 per person on healthcare last year.

That’s almost double what Switzerland and Germany spend. It’s more than five times what countries like South Korea and Portugal spend.

And yet, our outcomes are worse.

Much worse.

We rank 25th in life expectancy among developed nations, and we’re dead last in preventable death among wealthy peers.

In fact, there are only four countries in the entire world that have a higher avoidable mortality rate than us, and they all spend less than $2,000 per person on healthcare.

So why is the U.S. healthcare system so expensive compared to other countries? Where does all the money go?

• Hospital care: $1.5 trillion
• Physician and clinical services: $1.02 trillion
• Prescription drugs: $460 billion
• Insurance administration: $330+ billion

Let that last one sit.

We spend over $1,200 per person, per year, just to move paperwork.

Administrative waste accounts for more than 15% of all healthcare spending. And that’s before you even start to add in the cost of chronic disease, which eats up 90% of our total healthcare spending, despite being mostly preventable.

In other words, we’re not just spending more. We’re spending more on failure.

Because if that $15,750 per person led to the healthiest population in the world, no one would be complaining. It would be expensive, sure, but effective.

Instead, we have the most expensive system on Earth delivering the least effective results of any wealthy nation.

This isn’t simply inefficient. It’s dystopian.

So the obvious question becomes:

SECTION 2: The Incentive Engine Behind the Chaos