What you can easily compare are hospital beds for acute care - this is a much bigger pool than just icu.
You can also easily compare number of doctors per capita.
In both of these measures the US system lags behind places like Italy.
In the interest of avoiding possible hubris, I think it's worth noting that the numbers in the Statisica chart on ICU beds/100k persons (included in the oft cited link [1]) counts in its data for the USA all ICU beds, while the European numbers come from a study that explicitly exclude [2]:
"...private healthcare providers, neonatal and paediatric intensive care beds, coronary care, stroke and pure renal units"
The 34.7/100k number for the US does not exclude the above. According to [1] the US has:
"There are 68,558 adult beds (medical-surgical 46,795, cardiac 14,445, and other ICU 7318), 5137 pediatric ICU beds, and 22,901 neonatal ICU beds."
Attempting to match the criteria of both studies gives the USA about 46,795 beds. Assuming 320 MM people gives 14.5, not 34.7, per 100k. I haven't looked at the sources for other countries, but we can expect differences in methodologies of ICU bed counting.
I think this casual sort of comparison of national capabilities (like [3]) which lacks rigor is more dangerous than useful. I hope one will take a deeper dive if they're evaluating risks based on the numbers that have been posted.
[1] https://sccm.org/Blog/March-2020/United-States-Resource-Avai... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00134-012-2627-... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_...
FWIW: Gall bladder operation in NL all in: 1500 euros, non-subsidized and paid for out of pocket because I wasn't paying into the local healthcare system when it happened. Same procedure in the USA: $24000!
https://www.lendingpoint.com/blog/gallbladder-surgery-costs-...
Want to build a hospital in many states? Better be able to convince the licensing agency there is need for the beds. Want to build a hospital and accept Medicare? Better meet all the structural requirements they put in place.
Open the March update pdf here and look at the "excess" column on page 4:
https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/hfsrb/InventoriesData/Monthl...
The state has big impact on the capacity of the medical system.
I disagree, I'd say it's the opposite.
A commercial system can value surge capacity for peaks just like an online retailer does; the capacity to handle extra load means extra profit.
Whereas in a public health systems like the UK NHS everything is geared towards routine operational targets such as A&E waiting times. There is no budgetary or promotional reward for having reserve capacity.
Incidentally the NHS has just identified an unintended reserve: a pool of nurses who have been sitting in nadministrative middle-management roles for years. They are being retrained and redeployed now, but it illustrates the lack of efficiency in the system. A private provider would not have 'wasted' nursing staff in those positions.
the retraining nurses is somewhat of a point in the opposite direction -- the NHS has an easy pool to pull in because of the inefficiency. if all of the nurses were being used efficiently to begin with, there would not be an easy group to bring in.
scaling the number of doctors and nurses available takes a bit more time than hiring a bunch of people to put items in boxes
Sure it can, but that's obviously not the reality and spinning up extra servers is not the same as adding extra physical rooms and beds. This analogy doesn't make any sense.
>ncidentally the NHS has just identified an unintended reserve: a pool of nurses who have been sitting in nadministrative middle-management roles for years. They are being retrained and redeployed now, but it illustrates the lack of efficiency in the system. A private provider would not have 'wasted' nursing staff in those positions.
You're right. A private company would just fire the nurses instead.
https://sccm.org/Blog/March-2020/United-States-Resource-Avai...
It also fails the sniff test: The US has less total hospital beds than almost every other industrial nation, but at the same time the most ICU beds?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_hospital_...
So $24000 is like the asking price, you can come back and say "yeah well, i'll write you a check right now for $2500 otherwise you're sol.". Once a provider realizes what the max they're going to get is then, magically, that becomes the price.
To anyone who doesn't know this, don't you dare pay out of pocket what the bill says. Never. What's on the bill is not based in reality at all.
I submit that rethinking needs to be started early rather than late so the discussion isn't dominated by euphemisms for some very dark path.
[1] As we know, social isolation is to spread out the pace of acute cases so as not to overwhelm hospitals. But it obviously slows the economy considerably. The alternative would be to not to isolate, keeping businesses wide open and allow the medical system to be overwhelmed with its accompanying higher mortality rate.
The latter seems to have been way more effective in containing the epidemic and less impactful on the economy.
So, there was third option which saves both people and economy, but it's probably politically unfeasible.
I'm just saying that the person that needs to get off their ass and move on these ideas isn't Mary Barra but Donald Trump (and McConnell and Pelosi of course).
Ironically the way to make this stuff cheaper would be a three-fold attack.
* Make MORE things that use the same parts, so that making the raw materials is commodity.
* Reduce waste in use (if sterilizing the filters for reuse / etc is possible, etc).
Part 3: Look for alternatives that are feasible.
A hot-zone (book) style line supplied breathing air positive pressure suit that can be scrubbed clean on the outside, OR a similar glove-box (negative draw?, scrubbed inside?) style phone-booth like I think I saw on TV from South Korea (IIRC) would be much better replacements.
Reportedly the Hungarian government learned about this operation & are likely to do something similar in the next days.
Also in parallel, Czech Airlines aircraft have been pretty much drafted and sent to China for more stuff - like more tests, respirators and personal protective equipment. And one of the huge Ukrainian AN-124s has been chartered and is already on way for ~100 tons of medical supplies in one go, with more likely to follow.
Basically any classical goods transfer methods are far too slow for this and time is of essence.