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Let’s not pretend that American problems apply to the rest of the world.

I work in Australian healthcare systems and can tell you that this situation does apply to the rest of the world, although the charging usually occurs to the public purse rather than the other way around.

The problem is that these activity/diagnostic/lifestyle codes exist for good reasons but existing incentives can push diagnostic coders toward exploitation for maximum funding rather than as a tool for capturing treatment burdens.

The US spends dramatically more than every other OECD country.

It's not even slightly comparable. They are the clear outlier on Earth.

https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm

Which creates the bizarre artifact that the US government spends around the same or more on healthcare than the governments of countries with socialized healthcare systems.

I think you read the chart wrong. At least you write "around the same or more" when it is much more. The amount the source lists for "government/compulsory" spending is $9054. That is a quarter more than the _total_ of the next biggest spender (Switzerland at $7138).

The rest of the western world, may be.

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