HOUGHTON – More health care doesn’t necessarily mean better health.

Dean Sienko spoke on rising health care costs and the ethical considerations that might arise from reducing them Thursday as part of the Your Health Lecture Series at Michigan Technological University. Sienko is associate dean for Prevention and Public Health, director of the Division of Public Health and acting director of the Institute for Health Policy at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.

The U.S. spent $3.1 trillion on health care in 2014, or about 17.5 percent of the gross domestic product – twice the percentage of countries such as Canada or the United Kingdom. By 2024, that’s projected to rise to $5.4 trillion and 20 percent.

The U.S. is also getting worse health outcomes. A study by the National Research Council and institute of Medicine ranked America 16th out of 17 peer countries in life expectancy for women and 17th for men. They also ranked in the bottom half for categories such as infant mortality, obesity and heart disease.

More health-care spending might not do as much as better-targeted spending. A 2011 article found that countries that spend more on social services than health care had higher life expectancies and less premature death. While the U.S. is vastly higher in health care spending, it drops to 10th when social services spending is added in. That can mean addressing the social determinants that lead people to use tobacco, or incline them toward violence.

“This has to happen at an early age … If I were going to be king of the money pot, I would invest a lot more money in pre-K, early childhood interventions to try to help young children and help young families,” he said.

With increases in costs, and trends toward obesity and sedentary lifestyles, Sienko said, ethical dilemmas in treatment will arise. As people with some control over health care expenditures, he said, physicians are going to be under increasing pressure to gauge health benefits versus cost demands.

The aging population of America and the advent of newer technologies is going to force a reckoning with these issues, Sienko said.

“We’re going to have ethical issues forced upon us if we don’t deal with this,” he said.