TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Reihan Salam points out that until the 1980s, the growth in health care costs was in line with most of the developed world, and since the 1990s this held true, too. What this means is that while the U.S.’s health care costs are a larger percentage of our GDP than in other developed nations, this isn’t because our costs are growing faster—it’s because we started from a higher base as a result of outsized growth during the 1980s.

Salam argues this invalidates arguments that our higher health care costs relative to single-payer countries means single-payer is more cost-effective:

So if the real problem with U.S. health spending is that the U.S. diverged from its peer countries for a decade-long stretch, solving that problem isn’t quite as simple as mimicking the institutions and strategies of our peer countries, whether it’s Canada’s single-payer system or the hybrid models of France or Germany. Our peer countries are facing the same challenges we are, albeit with slightly more breathing room.

This isn’t something to celebrate, either—actually, it’s a warning sign that the rest of the world’s health care costs are growing at roughly similar rates to our own. If the rest of the world is in the same boat, there’s no easy solution to slow our own health care costs, but it’s something we’ll have to do. And we’ll have to find a way to slow them even more than the rest of the world, because we’re starting from a much bigger hole.