US healthcare still stupidly expensive, with pathetic outcomes, study finds
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
There is absolutely no reason for a doctor to make over $1000 for a 15 minute conversation.
There is absolutely no reason for a medical equipment provider to bill more than the retail price of a piece of equipment, especially after insurance has already paid more than the full cost of the equipment on each installment.
There is absolutely no reason for a family to receive a bill of almost one million dollars because their baby was premature and was in the NICU (see @thepasinins on instagram).
There are too many layers in the system making a fortune off the public's back while adding little to no actual value.
Some doctors will do 4 of those an hour, but most will do 6. And they'll try and find ways to bill additional codes above the consult.
I have a nephew training to be a doctor now. He's looking at $500k in student loan debt by the end. That's a major problem.
If it's his own private practice then yeah, he pockets a lot of that 250k. If he's working for a hospital, then he has basically no influence on the price he's not payed per surgery.
What is artifical when talking about a program that subsidizes residency?
Focus on limited federal residency funding seems to be a red herring. Most modern economic analyses seems to show residency programs are net profitable before federal subsidies.
IMO the problem is largely structural, around how these are positions and services are handeled by regulation and insurance.
I suspect people overweight it for reasons above. Underweight factors would the long US education path to become a doctor being twice that of many countries, and extremely high cost and high accreditation of medical schools.
By way of hypothetical, if we doubled residency funding. Would new doctors double, go up 10%, or stay the same?
If education time and obscene school costs are the bottle neck, it might not matter much. Some 25% of residents are already paid out of pocket by hospitals because residents make hospitals money.
If we cut it entirely, what would happen?
I just dont see why it is or must be the case for the reasons I already posted.
Yeah, it basically all comes down to the bureaucratic nightmare that ultimately benefits the owners of all things medical. Prices have nothing to do with the value of the good or service and everything to do with the maximum amount of profit that can be extracted from a 3rd party.
One of the worst moves in the last 30 years was Clinton adding private insurance options onto Medicare. In the last 60 years was making medicaid a state run program rather than a national program (or just medicare all together). It's actually crazy that we have 53 different government healthcare options. 1 for every state, medicare, and the VA. It's even more crazy that the government doesn't simply directly employ doctors and medical equipment. It's so crazy inefficient to involve 3rd and 4th parties into something that should be direct care.
The US remains one of the only wealthy nations in the world without nationalized healthcare. And we pay through it through the nose.
The doctor isn't making $4000/hour, although you might be getting billed for that.
That doctor (unless some exotic specialist) is probably making not too far from ~300K, so that's around 144/hr, or $36 for that 15 minute conversation.
All the rest is being siphoned off by the system.
The entire system (including nurses and technicians) are just agents making semi-rational decisions in their own self interest. Is it important to judge people within an existing system or is it important to look at locus points that, when pressure is applied, can make durable changes to the system?
How exactly?
physicians bear responsibility if its a private practice, but otherwise they're operating within the constraints of their org's protocols too, though they do have more autonomy (depending on the situation)
but really, your beef should be with the health organizations themselves
and also, many of these protocols are in place because _insurance companies_ require them to be in place
Do you have indications that those are worse where wait times happen to be higher, or so you just take it for granted that longer waits must mean worse net experience?
A quick search reveals the best ER wait times worldwide are in the US, Germany, and Switzerland, with most the rest of western Europe dead last along with Canada and Australia.
The average ER wait time in the US is 24 minutes. In France 2h21m. Italy 2h44m.
Everyone likes to say how great Canadian healthcare is, but talk to actual Canadians and the cracks start to show, you're waiting months for a CT scan, and most need employer-provided health insurance anyway to fill gaps in coverage.
I've been to the ER in my country because of abnormal stomach pain. Obviously I was triaged and had to wait hours because it was not considered life threatening. But in the end a doctor saw me for free. I think if I were in the USA and didn't have health insurance I would have just stayed home and avoided the risk of an expensive bill.
It also confuses me whenever Americans bring up that point to defend their profit-driven system, because to me it seems like bringing up something that's completely unrelated to money and billing just to make the other systems look worse by any means. How does a publicly-funded system intrinsically cause longer wait times? From what I can see here, it's an issue of doctor supply, caused by some of the most gruelling, limited-capacity and expensive training processes in the country, as well as purposeful underfunding by the provinces, not by how much money I pay on the way out.
Actually, maybe there is one factor in pricing that causes shorter wait times. I know it's not uncommon for people in the US to wait until they're basically dying to get medical care, because they're that averse to financial ruin. That would naturally cause somewhat lower demand, if you're okay with existing in that system with those kinds of externalities.
Just for completeness: I presume that is referring to government owned hospitals in Australia, which are free. There are also privately owned hospitals. I've not had to wait at a private hospital.
Private hospitals are expensive, but I suspect not as expensive as USA hospitals. The price is held in check by the alternative of "wait a little longer, and it's free".
I am in support of socialized medicine, but most Americans like their healthcare when asked, and until that changes, the system won't change either.
There's also many, many types of universal healthcare (including the very crude version we currently have in the US), some of which have more support than others.
I would support a system like Japan, Switzerland, or the UK, but not one where private insurance is banned.
It's just a blatant lie.
I've experienced healthcare outside the US (in the UK) and it's on par with US healthcare in terms of wait times. Seeing a GP was same day with walk ins. When not busy, it was just a 5 minute wait.
Seeing a specialist can take time. I knew people that saw a 3 month wait to see a specialist in the UK. In the US, I just experienced a 3 year wait getting a specialist for my kid with autism. I had to go out of state to get the initial diagnosis, but to get local followup care I had to do that 3 year wait. After that, we were able to get a bunch of referrals to other issues.
What constrains wait time is how many doctors and specialists are working in a field. That has almost zero to do with the underlying payment system of a healthcare system.
Getting a specialist in a major metro area will easily take 6-9 months. Family doctors? Anything to do with mental health? Good luck.
Oh, and if you think the situation is better in flyover country... It might be. You might have a world-class pediatric hospital in your zip code[1]. Or, more likely, you will have to drive 80 miles to a roach-motel-grade one. Turns out that poor people in real America don't have a lot of money, and it's not economical to provide them with any healthcare beyond leeching and bloodletting and four pills of Tylenol that will cost them $50.
Good luck getting an abortion, too.
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[1] You'll still get fraudulent bills sent to you by vendors who claim to have performed non-existent services on you, while the hospital won't even be able to tell you if those vendors even work for the hospital. Ask me how I know. (After days of digging, it turns out that no, they don't.)
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Look. It's entirely possible to in theory have a privatized system that works. Also, as Homer Simpson famously said, 'In theory, communism works.'
Unfortunately, we live in the real world, not a theoretical one.
2. Even in countries where people are unsatisfied with free-ish wait times (regardless of whether US waits might be longer), that average complainer may still not want a US-like system. I.e. people might complain about waits in their free-ish system but still think a (theoretically) faster US system is worse. I think a lot of people’s thought process is simply “I wish this were faster” which is still quite different from “I wish we had a fast US system.”
[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/truth-wait-times-un...
But, as with most things, the US is too big for any one persons experience to be universally applicable.
As I said, it’s what most people express that I talk to. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s true for every area of the country.
Quote:
“…has produced one of the lowest ratios of medical school graduates, 8.6 for every 100,000 people. This is far lower than the OECD average of nearly 15 graduates per 100,000 people.”No doctor makes this much for a 15 minute conversation. A small portion of that money is going to the doctor. Much of it goes to all the other aspects of healthcare. The facility, other people involved in care, etc.
And no 15 minute visit costs 1000 dollars to the patient as well. That’s a pretty big exaggeration.
So it certainly didn't cost me $1000, but the numbers are impressive.
You’re right. The Swiss system is deeply privatized, down to compulsory private insurance [1]. It just isn’t as opaque and corrupt as the American one.
Part of the problem with the American system is everyone is cynical with respect to reform, and has a singular bogeyman they’re convinced explains all of the problem, with zero room for multiple causation.
Not sure about that. But each person tends to have something like a single sentinel flag. E.g.: does medicare negotiate drug prices? And if there's a change for the better, they won't believe it's anything but a short term grift until they read it back as "true" from at least 16 different threads over the course of, say, 9 consecutive years.
Given that their representatives currently use phrases like "medicare advantage" to mean "off traditional medicare and on private insurance," that caution seems warranted.
It's not caution. It's reductiveness that contributes to the problem.
You might want to check that. In Cuba's case, not really unless you focus on their export of medical services. But for the greater case it's totally free. And qualitatively better than what the US provides.
A standard healthcare visit looks like:
- you have some concerning symptoms
- you schedule an appointment with a doctor that’s at least several days if not weeks away
- you go to the appointment, wait 40 minutes, see the doctor for 10 minutes and they either prescribe you a medicine, request labs, imaging, or refer you to a specialist.
- if it’s either of the latter two, you have to book another appointment and this one is likely weeks out.
- you go to get imaging or see a specialist and repeat the loop from the second step
The whole process takes months, there’s plenty of time to for consumers to choose options but they aren’t presented with any. If you get a prescription, you just take what the doctor prescribed and you won’t even know how much it costs until you go to pick it up. You have no idea what the labs or imaging cost either, nor any options to choose where to get them. The whole system is just a huge mess of misaligned incentives.
1. way too many regulations and lobbies that prevent any relaxation by scaremongering
2. unions that artifically constrain labor supply. doctors lobby to keep number of doctors low and regulatory capture preventing forign doctors from entering workforce. Uk for example imports doctors from india.
both political parties have their own agenda to not disrupt above . democrats love regulation and unions. republicans love corporate profits from regulatory capture.
healthcare is exterme opposite of freemarket despite the veneer
But "suppliers" know that demand has bo choice but swallow the prices and services.
Kind of like "cable companies" oligopolies but worse (see southpark espisode).
Health care should not be for profit.
Americans drive cars and most live in unwalkable places. These impart significant risks that the healthcare system, no matter how good, wouldn't impact.
Has anyone dug into this to identify whether they tried to account for built environment? Or food system?
About 41k people die on the road in the US per year. While this is very high, and worse than pretty much any other developed country, it’s not going to move the needle _that_ much.
Though, in Ireland, for instance, the worst parts of the country for car dependency would be close to as bad as the US. Their life expectancy is a little lower than the national one, but it’s not dramatic, and certainly not as low as the US one. There’s something else going on.
40% of Americans are obese and 75% are overweight. This is largely outside of the control of the medical system, but has a significant impact on mortality and life expectancy.
I assure you that preventative medicine does exist, even in the USA. Moreover, healthcare interventions for people with "lifestyle" diseases such as obesity have been extremely effective in reducing mortality from downstream causes such cardiovascular disease (e.g. statins).
Diet and exercise are huge health variables that doctors don't really have the tools to do anything about.
Obesity can be prevented, can be treated, and its effects on health can be managed. We are actually living through something of a miracle in the treatment of lifestyle diseases. For example, the proportion of total deaths among adults with diabetes from vascular causes (heart disease) declined from 48% in 1988–94 to 34% in 2010–15 (https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)30314-3).
The USA is not some kind of global outlier with a uniquely unhealthy population. The problem is *very obviously* something to do with how healthcare is provided here.
It is, actually. Our obesity rates are the highest in the world at 41%. This is nearly double many European countries, and five times higher than Japan or South Korea. Only a handful of tiny Polynesian islands have us beat.
Better treatments for diabetes are great, but what's even better is not getting diabetes at all by losing weight.
Not just discussions with a patient, but advising the government, pushing for regulation on things related to obesity, working with schools, etc.
Arguably, the problem in the US isn't that these are outside the control of the medical system, but that most Americans believe they should be outside the control of the medical system.
In (some) other countries, your comment would be a real "WTF?"
[1] Throwing in questions like "Is there a firearm in your house?" and "Is there a swimming pool in your house" intermixed with "normal" medical questions.
The results are not all that different. The USA lags other rich nations, and even middle income nations like Costa Rica and Chile. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2023...
Macca's in Australia has healthier food than McDonalds in the US, exercise is very common place, etc.
Speaking of Obesity - Australian PSA (1975): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNjEge3Awl8
But those investments or lack thereof aren't the root cause of our obesity crisis. That's land use, urban planning, subsidies to corn, completely outside the healthcare system. If you made the healthcare system as perfect as you wanted it to be, you would be fighting an uphill battle with these problems, it's very questionable whether you'd have any real impact.
There are studies of healthcare system efficacy. Rate of diagnosis relative to likely incidents of particular illnesses. Treatment effectiveness after diagnosis. And frankly, the US does much better than most countries when you measure just the healthcare system. But people don't like that, they challenge it immediately, because it's not what they want to believe.
If public health policy was sensible it would heavily regulate high-fructose syrup, not subsidise corn, plan cities and suburbs to have plentiful free access open space and exercise areas, good public transport, walkways and cycle ways.
As happens in Australia, ideally soon to regulate high-sucrose levels in soft drinks to close up that sugar gap.
> And frankly, the US does much better than most countries when you measure just the healthcare system.
And still has lower life expectancy and cancer recovery rates than Australia. But people don't like that, they challenge it immediately, because it's not what they want to believe.
Australia and the US have nearly identical cancer survival rates according to CONCORD-3, with the US around half a percentage point ahead. CONCORD-4 isn't done yet since it's only been 7 years since the last cohort of diagnoses. What are you seeing that says something different? Is there a newer data set I'm not aware of?
The Onion article should have really been written about the Healthcare system, which every week does more damage to Americans than all of mass shootings have done in a decade.
It's unfathomable what else could have been achieved with the extra 8% of GDP going towards projects that would benefit the entire nation...renewables, nuclear, grid upgrades, housing projects. Hell, even AI spending pales in comparison to these figures.
There’s always talk of freedoms and being brave and being the best country in the world to live in, but very, very little effort of action to improve anything.
The French riot in the streets if a single day of their extremely generous (by US standards) leave is taken away. Meanwhile Americand can’t get off the couch to protest, or are afraid of their own government if they do.
Its all just talk.
So do something to get control.
Americans have been conned that they live in the greatest country and that nothing needs to improve. And now you say they have no control.
They are the workers. A six month general strike would literally change everything about the entire country, forever. They just lack the will.
The issue is not that Americans are insufficiently violent.
I agree but what is the alternative? Not buying health insurance? Moving to a different country? Please don't say voting (That has solved nothing.)
The number of Americans with no health insurance dropped by more than 4 million between 2020 and 2024.
The principal components in life expectancy difference between the US and the other OECDs are car accidents, homicides, and CVD. Obviously, accidents and homicides aren't a function of the health care system; they're a function of the atypical dependence the US has on cars and its wildly atypical availability of firearms. Though: it is worth noting that the OECD definition of "preventable deaths" includes vehicular accidents!
But even the CVD statistics are misleading in a comparison like this. CVD outcomes are heavily regionalized in the US. The New England states have CVD outcomes comparable to western Europe. But go to Mississippi and Alabama and we look like a developing country. There's a lot of stuff going into that difference, but the key thing here is that the structural design of the health system is the same in both regions.
There's a lot not to like about the US system of employer-paid health insurance. But these kinds of critiques are frustrating and a little unserious, and it annoys me that this article assumes its readers won't dig into the crosstabs and will just take the comparison on faith. That's disrespectful to readers.
This is a long-standing fact. It's difficult to interpret without concluding that something is badly wrong with US healthcare provision.
Plenty of people out there trying, though
Causes of America’s Lagging Life Expectancy: An International Comparative Perspective (Jessica Ho); there's an amazing chart in the middle that breaks causes down between countries.
This squares with a general observation about US healthcare, which is that it is expensive and overprovisioned and generally achieves marginally better outcomes for a variety of common serious conditions, which is also what you'd expect if you've had extended contact with the system.
Looking just at treatable mortality (so not preventable deaths from cars and guns) the international ranking of mortality statistics changes only slightly. USA remains below the OECD average, behind comparably rich nations, down among middle income nations like Peru.
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2023...
You keep coming back with data that begs the question.
But yes, based on the unverifiable numbers put out by the state media organs, healthcare in Cuba is very good.
If it's anything like the regime Cuba is modeled on (Russia) treatment is good in the capital city where Prez lives, and non-existent in the regions.
24 million Americans are insured under ACA. The current president has issued several executive orders that undermine the provision of ACA insurance and increase its cost. Millions are dropping coverage as the increases kick in. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/business/obamacare-enroll...)
(to improve US healthcare, laws will need to change; when those laws change is a function of election outcomes and cadence; those election outcomes are a function of the electorate, who they vote for, and the rate of cohort turnover; think in systems)
This timeline seems wildly optimistic
Congratulations, I think you just described the most ridiculous non-profit in existence.
It's actually been a fun exercise in building a gen AI solution to pour context into queries and get custom migration plans [eligible visas, employment connections at the destination, potential non traditional paths outside of work visas] out like an expat/migration plan vending machine. Output is verified by a human familiar with the problem space and away we go getting someone to where they want to go.
"Make something people want. Don't worry too much about making money." The demand, I argue, is proven. You should try to be more curious.
Record Numbers of Younger Women Want to Leave the U.S. - https://news.gallup.com/poll/697382/record-numbers-younger-w... - November 13th, 2025 ["In 2025, 40% of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad permanently if they had the opportunity. The current figure is four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014, when it was generally in line with other age and gender groups."]
Americans are leaving the US at rates not seen since the Great Depression — and 5,000 even gave up citizenship last year - https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/americans-leaving... - May 24th, 2026
Americans Are Leaving the U.S. in Record Numbers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161219 - February 2026 (93 comments)
Those people would be better off under a more generous welfare state, but immigration policies in those nations are much less dysfunctional than our own. If you are able to offload some of these people onto another nation, I thank you, but it's a very odd focus for a charity.
If you want an example of how uninformed the people inside your TAM are, see the younger women polled in your citation. Based on other data, I strongly suspect they are motivated to leave due to actual and potential changes in abortion law and policy in the US (which I do not support for the record), and have absolutely no clue whatsoever what rights they would have in most of the rest of the world (spoiler alert, it's less than most Americans have).
What disposable income? There is very little, if any, middle class left ("K-shaped economy"). You say misinformed, but the economic ground truth is clear as day imho.
Americans Are Falling Behind on Their $1.25 Trillion Credit-Card Bill - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48327518 - May 2026
‘It’s never enough’: young Americans struggle to build financial independence as cost of living spikes - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/31/young-adults... - May 31st, 2026
Brookings: States of Affordability: A series on where and why US households struggle to make ends meet - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/states-of-affordability-a... - May 27th, 2026
This is how close American households are to the financial edge - https://www.npr.org/2026/05/28/nx-s1-5836525/affordability-r... - May 26th, 2026
Urban Institute: The American Affordability Tracker - https://www.urban.org/data-tools/american-affordability-trac... - Last updated April 2nd, 2026
> Nearly half of people in American families cannot afford the true cost of living. Urban research finds 49 percent of people in American families don’t have the resources to cover essential expenses to live securely in their community.
> The cost of essential goods and services is rising faster than earnings. Since 2017, average earnings have grown about 43 percent nationwide. Over the same period, home sale prices have increased 81 percent and rents 54 percent. The lowest-cost Silver health plan on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace has risen 77 percent, and child care costs have grown dramatically.
> Rising everyday expenses, including energy and transportation, are adding new pressures on households. Residential electricity costs have increased faster than earnings across much of the country, leaving customers paying about $40 more in December 2025 on average than they did in December 2017. Gas prices have also risen sharply, with the national average growing by $1.00 per gallon since late February 2026.
> Affordability pressures are spreading beyond traditionally high-cost areas.
> Many previously low-cost regions, including parts of Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Winston-Salem, Columbus, Nashville, western New York, south-central Wisconsin, and central Florida, are seeing costs for housing, health care, and groceries rise faster than in other areas.
Brookings: In every corner of the country, the middle class struggles with affordability - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/in-every-corner-of-the-co... - December 2nd, 2025
Americans are losing spending power, say researchers: Most can no longer afford a ‘minimal quality of life’ - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/13/most-americans-cant-afford-a... - June 13th, 2025
US Dept of Labor: Childcare costs remain an almost prohibitive expense - https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-rem... - November 19th, 2024
Claiming there's "very little middle class left" is laughable, and then I can double over when I remember that the median household income is higher in Mississippi than it is in the UK.
Your wall of citations is basically just documenting the vibes I described. You missed the "(some scary percentage) of households are living paycheck to paycheck" one which is regularly discredited because people don't know how much they spend in general and consider things like optional 401k contributions to be "spending".
Please, please, please provide the name of this charity so I can donate to it.
Imagine the profit margins where you don't have to pay salaries to them.
Phone and front desk stuff is just administrative burden, scheduling the appointment and making a paper trail.
Any given health provider has to deal with thousands of different insurers, and it's not uncommon for individual patients to have primary, secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary insurers the provider then has to deal with to get paid for a procedure.
To keep health care workers focused on providing health care, providers hire a bunch of administrative workers whose job is to offload the work of haggling with insurance onto cheaper workers, but because there's so many insurers, and patients have so many layers of insurance, you end up with something close to 10 administrators per doctor.
Alas, because there's so much money sloshing around in the system, and because the US government is so thoroughly corrupt with bribes from special interests, there's no movement to correct the problem. The system is unsustainable, though, so it will inevitably collapse in on itself at some point, causing a lot of misery and probably death before anything is fixed.
A thing that's always worth keeping in mind: retail clinical practice for non-geriatric adults is a very small fraction of all health care costs in the US, and end-of-life care is a very large fraction. Most of us only have exposure to the former, and we generalize from it, but that's not giving us an accurate picture.
Worse is the distortion of incentives for healthcare providers. The giant leaky insurance tit is there to be sucked on, creating corruption at every level.
When you are billed for a procedure you have no idea how much you are going to get charged or what you could get billed for. There could be gigantic opaque charges for things you have never heard of. Ticketmaster could only dream of such a rip-off.
Not to mention blatant over-billing for unnecessary diagnostics, etc. Every year new kickback schemes are discovered.
Price transparency is a real problem. Overbilling is a real problem, so is overprescription. Important to keep in mind that those are on the provider side, not the payer.
Here's JAMA for the BIR, based directly on cost breakdowns in specific real systems:
"Administrative costs have been estimated to represent 25% to 31% of total health care expenditures in the United States, a proportion twice that found in Canada and significantly greater than in all other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development member nations for which such costs have been studied."
The UK health care system is an absolute joke, it's a running joke among a lot of the population. It's not free for a start, the taxes the population have to pay are eye watering. You have to wait weeks, if not months for a specialist, hospital beds are few, there is no accountability for regular fuck ups (I've been on the bad end of a horrific one).
The US system from what I have seen so far is a dream. It's cheaper and the service is top notch.
For context I've moved from the Midlands in the UK to the Research Triangle in North Carolina.
If you take any kind of look at disparities in health outcomes, it becomes immediately apparent who is dragging down the mortality statistics. This is not something espresso-drinking researchers at WHO dreamed up to fight a culture war.
NHS services are free at the point of care. I worked in the NHS for a good few years. Never swiped anybody's credit card.
In the USA, calling an ambulance will set you back more than $1,000. No insurance? Better not give birth. You'll need 20 grand. Maybe 50 grand for a C-section.
Our second child was born at Kings College Hospital in Lambeth, in a bed, with a midwife, listening to music. No jacuzzi required.
It's hard not to see those downvotes as copium or cognitive dissonance given no arguments have been presented to the contrary.
When basic exams cost them easily US$100k, you know the system is broken.
Health system is a business model in the US, and people who are organ donor are literally being murdered to have their organs removed.
Don't trust my owners, you won't need much to find that out.
The ACA baseline plan has to cover a yearly checkup, basic screenings for things like blood pressure and cholesterol, and even more in depth screenings like colonoscopies or pap smears; all at 0 out of pocket cost.
The solution are not better Hospitals to deal with your diabetes or cancer after all your food has sugars it should not have like corn syrup because sugar is cheap. You have so much additives in your food for preservation. Meat is full of Hormones.
Antibiotics on your vegetables that destroy your microbiota. Genetically Modified to fill the fields with pesticides.
Now Americans are obese as they process the growth hormones from their meat and their microbiota dies from the antibiotics they eat in their vegetables and their meat.
Waiting until your children has autism or asthma or cancer is not the solution.
The saying is the US doesn’t have “health care” we have “sick care.” Preventing diseases? Not profitable. Giving people diseases then charging them for treatment? Profitable.
Fortunately the obesity epidemic has a cliff like tail end, as those people tend to eat themselves into an early grave and lack the resources to pay to prolong their participation in Planet Earth.
Calories in > calories out.
The great news is that when you eat less, it brings down the relative costs of better food. Instead of pounds of low quality ground beef, 3 packs of Twinkies, and a case of beer; buy some higher quality organic chicken, or even better, some organic vegetables.
I've been overweight in my life and I hate it. You know how I lost weight and kept if off? I ate healthier, I walk a lot (to the grocery store, for example). US grocery stores have all the same healthy foods as every other country. You can eat healthy at restaurants too, if you must.
It's just people don't. There's nothing inehrently bad about food in the US. We at eat too much and don't exericse (walk). Now, if you'll look at all the other countries joining us in this because it isn't a US thing anymore.
You've added all these extra explanations (corn syrup, antibiotics, growth hormones) but it really isn't that complicated. BTW, I'm sure if you ate konbini foods every day in Japan and didn't exercise enough you'd get fat, too. There's nothing different about that food than a lot of junk/fast food in the US, it's just the Japanese seem to walk a lot more and I don't know how many people only eat out of 7/11.
Except that sugar (or more often, corn syrup) is added to everything.
Just as a small example: most regular people don't have the time to bake their own bread or make their own spaghetti sauce from scratch, so they get both from the store. However, in the US, unlike most European countries (and probably the rest of the world), both have tons of added sugar and/or corn syrup. This is true for most foods in the US, and while it's certainly possible to eat healthy, it's a lot harder to do so here.
> and don't exericse (walk)
A big part of this, too, is that not only are most areas in the US not designed to be walking-accessible, but I daresay most are designed to be openly hostile to pedestrians. Added bonus: in the case where you do happen to live in a walking-friendly area, you still can't send your kids out to walk around, lest you invite visits from CPS.
That isn't to say people in the US can't be doing more than they are to get healthy, but arguing it's no more difficult to stay in shape in the US versus other parts of the world is at best self-delusion.
What inherently prevents you from cooking a tortilla or baking bread in the US vs Spain? Do frying pans and ovens work differently? Has the US outlawed paella?
One of these is not like the other.