Health Care Eats Inovation?

If health care eats 17% of the GDP in the US (probably 2 or 3 times the world average) and if health care eats 20% of the Federal budget (on top of 32% for social security and other mandatory spending), how much can we seriously expect to invest in innovation to increase productivity?

Two related problems: (1) we want Denmark-style entitlements without paying Denmark style taxes; (2) economic growth is not a national goal; consumption is what people want.

That last one is not by any means original, but what interests me is the potential effect on the rate of innovation.  Part of innovation is someone having a new idea on how to do things better.  Another part is finding the money to turn that idea into reality.

I think the health care/life sciences community  might reply that no cost is to large  if it saves a single life (I’m not making this one up, the President of Yale said this to me) and that the emphasis on health care does lead to innovation in new treatments and drugs.  But these are innvoaitn in how to consume, not how to produce (unless they can be exported).