Operational Definitions And Healthcare Costs

Economic Scene - Support for Health Reform Requires Facing Facts on Costs - NYTimes.com:

"The United States now devotes one-sixth of its economy to medicine. Divvy that up, and health care will cost the typical household roughly $15,000 this year, including the often-invisible contributions by employers. That is almost twice as much as two decades ago (adjusting for inflation). It’s about $6,500 more than in other rich countries, on average."

I want to figure out how Mr. Leonhardt calculated his $15,000 per "typical household" number. The U.S. economy was $14,264.6 trillion dollars at the end of 2008.

If medicine is 1/6th of the U.S. economy, then it represents $2,377.4 trillion dollars. To get the number of of households, this figure is by $15,000. Meaning there were 158 million households.

Of course, this calculation depends on the writer using the same operational definition for the U.S. economy that I did. I suspect he isn't doing so because the number of 2008 households in the U.S. is 116.8 million according to the U.S. Census Bureau. (Table AVG1)