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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Health care prices in the US were reasonable until the government got involved in it in the 1960s.

Prices rose with inflation until 1968, when they started angling up steeply. 1968 was soon after the advent of Medicaid and Medicare.

The 1962 FDA amendments also resulted in a steep rise in drug costs, and a sharp reduction in new drugs being developed.

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If that's true, how are they so much more reasonable in most developed countries with far greater government involvement still? Is the US government just uniquely bad at healthcare somehow? Why?

It is true. Look at graphs of it.

> Why?

I don't know how other countries manage their health care systems, though I know that the British one is facing bankruptcy, and while health care was free in the Soviet Union patients had to pay for anesthetic for root canals, and bribery was the norm.

Here's a link to what's wrong with the American system:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...

>British one is facing bankruptcy

No it isn't.

By reasonable do you mean 30-50% of your income for your entire life? Regardless of whether you use the services?

No country in the world has you paying 30-50% og your income to health care, it's more like 15-18%

Where on earth are you getting that figure from?

The uk tax receipts in 2024 was 342.2 billion.

The nhs budget was 181 billion. Half of all government money appears to be going to healthcare.

What percentage of people's money is government money?

You appear to be working on the assumption that 100% of the population's income goes to the UK exchequer

… Where on earth are you getting that? As a high earner in a European country, about 8-9% of my income goes on the health service (though that includes some non-healthcare stuff). And I’m an extreme outlier; multinational salary and equity, single, no kids. For a single childless person on the average wage it’s about 2.5%.

What’s your effective tax rate?

Didn't the de jure government get involved in WWII with prices caps on wages yet exempting benefits, and this set the stage for the anticompetitive bundling of healthcare with employment? And wasn't the standard of care back then predominantly flavoring plus opium, which has a quite low cost basis?

Yes, employers during WW2 started offering health care as a fringe benefit because the US had wage caps. Even earlier, the government required licensing of doctors, the original purpose of which was to drive out Jewish and Black doctors.

https://www.amazon.com/Competition-Monopoly-Medical-Care-Fre...

But the big government push into health care happened in the 60's.

Another big driver of American health care costs is the FDA:

https://www.amazon.com/Regulation-Pharmaceutical-Innovation-...

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