Return on Investment for Lobbying is 200,000%. (Not a Typo.)

In a previous post, I estimated that the USA pays an unneeded $4,000 per person per year on healthcare. Using my rule-of-thumb that there’s 1/3 of a billion people in the USA, that amounts to $1,333 billion per year in excess spending. Why are we wasting that much money?

The healthcare industry spends millions on lobbying politicians. According to OpenSecrets, in 2016:

• Pharmaceuticals/Health Products companies spent $247,448,814.
• Insurance companies spent $153,860,996.
• Hospitals/Nursing Homes spent $96,735,789.
• Health Professionals spent $84,714,166.
• Health Services/HMOs spent $76,546,293.

That amounts to roughly $660 million or $0.66 billion. If that’s the investment and the return is $1,333 billion, then the return-on-investment (ROI) is 201,970%. That’s a LOT better than then 5 to 7% ROI that I expect in the stock market.