An edited transcript of the conversation follows. 
What has been the greatest contributor to high healthcare costs in the U.S.?
Weissman: The thing that raises healthcare costs in the United States above competitor nations more than anything is the massive administrative waste that's due to a multi-payer private system. There's also a huge amount of profit-taking by the insurance companies, by drug companies, and by for-profit hospitals and private equity. The thing that's driving the growth is increasing use of technology and increasing profit extraction in particular sectors of the healthcare economy. [MEDPAGE TODAY]

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It's all kinds of things from too many tests, too many monitors, and of course, increasingly expensive pharmaceutical products that may not be any more expensive to manufacture, to do R&D [research and development] on, but where the drug companies are charging 10 times what they would have charged not too many years ago.

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