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That's what makes it tricky. I haven't thought through all the nuances, but there should be some metric to tell us when there's a problem, like if you're spending more on maintenance on your car but at the same time it's breaking down more.
And, let's be honest, how many of us truly believe that growth in US healthcare is due to efficiency enhancing health procedures, vs a sicker population and/or market distortions
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to play devil's advocate:
If we get better at helping sick people get healthy, or extending lifespans, then presumably those people can go on to be productive in society. If spend a lot of money on cancer treatments and old age treatments and things that deal with chronic pain or mental illness, and those things result in people being more productive, shouldn't we count the money spent in that manner as the same as any other increase in efficiency?
it is clearly in an increase to productivity to have computers that allow us to do more with our time. Why wouldn't healthcare that allows us to do more with our time be the same?
I'm sure you are right with your skepticism of GDP and also with the general idea that healthcare is more like fixing broken windows than it is like some productive category, but I wonder if the logical end of such a line reasoning is that the only things that are truly productive are things that increase our productivity?