Instead we are forced to watch some of the wealthiest companies on the planet burn money for fun because apparently the government is "wasteful."
What a crock of shit.
I favor universal health insurance, but you’re going to pay more, not less. European countries didn’t flip some magic switch where they saved a bunch of money by just “cutting out the profit.” They do it through measures like the UK NHS setting the standards of care, so in a malpractice lawsuit the entity that says what the doctor ought to have done is the same entity that bears the cost of unnecessary tests and procedures. Efficiency is also achieved by aggressively rationing providers such as MRIs, keeping health worker salaries low, etc. There is no stomach to do any of that in the U.S.
Moreover, there is a massive amount of overcare that americans aren’t willing to confront. My wife’s grandmother had a stroke at 87 and was airlifted from rural oregon to a hospital in portland. She had only 3/4 of her lungs after having cancer in her 60s. The doctors wanted to do an intensive intervention, which didn’t happen only because she refused and died peacefully the next day. My parents are on medicare and they just wander into the ER every time their blood pressure goes too high. I took my 7 y/o son in for a black eye after he ran into a table. The doctor looked at him, concluded there was almost no chance of internal bleeding, but ordered an MRI (or CAT scan, I forget which) “just in case.” We got one and the results within 90 minutes because we just have million dollar machines lying around “just in case.” My daughter went to get her retainer at a small dental office in exurban Maryland, and the office had four people working at the checkin desk. I think this practice has only three dentists total.
America’s “customer is always right” culture means it will be politically impossible to roll back any of this.
Also, as your description of overcare is happening under the current system, a profit-oriented one at that (which incentivizes the ordering of unnecessary tests and procedures) it sounds like you would actually benefit from a non-market-controlled, more modest (even austere), system!
Postwar America was built on the customer being right. The healthcare system is one of the glaring major examples of the customer not getting what it wants. Give the customer a better system.
Profit is part of it, but the legal system and culture are equally big parts. Malpractice claims are handled by jury trial in the U.S., and you can always get a doctor on the stand as an expert who will tell a jury that it was negligent not to order a million tests. The UK NHS avoids that by having the NHS set the standard of care. And malpractice claims have to go through an administrative system before resorting to court. And culture is big, too. Americans aren’t going to tolerate being sent to hospice before blowing through $1 million on heroic but futile end of life care.
> it sounds like you would actually benefit from a non-market-controlled, more modest (even austere), system!
I support such a system. My point is that there would be no political will to enforce modesty and austerity.
Try to get a unilateral diagnostic mammogram. Sorry in the system I am in there is no code for a unilateral diagnostic, only bilateral, even if only one side actually requires diagnosis.
Why? Because 2X the charge and income fir little extra care cost. And who would ever complain about such “excellent” care? Recent experience.
They sort of have with pharmaceuticals (which to be clear is only maybe 10-15% of overall healthcare spending) by having the government negotiate drug prices nationally, instead of having individual insurers negotiate. This has monopsonistic effects, which really does cut the profit margins of drug manufacturers substantially. Of course, in many ways, they’re free riding on drug discovery funded by profits made overseas (particularly in America) but it does result in appreciable savings.
The idea that a for-profit system is more efficient than say medicare is hilariously out of touch. Medicare is one of the most popular programs in the country (like >80% from overall public, >90% from active users). There is no reason to deny such a program from the vast majority of Americans, unless you stand to profit from it.
Secondary Education (6–12): The U.S. spends 23% of its GDP per capita per student. This sits just slightly below the OECD average of 24%.
I think that the obesity rate is a lot higher in the US than a lot of other OECD countries, so people aren't starving but its hard to say their nutritionally thriving.
That could be more attributed to the income gap and concentration of wealth in the US as well.
Obesity rates don’t follow any predictable pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r.... The countries around the U.S. on the obesity scale are places like Egypt, Chile, Mexico, Saudi, etc. What do these countries have in common? Probably nothing other than idiosyncratic cuisine and lifestyle habits and maybe genetics (non-asian versus asian).
The U.S. is at $20k, well over the OECD average of $15k. O my Austria, Norway, and Luxembourg are higher.
If you can't tell I am extremely pessimistic about the changes of universal healthcare improving on our current system. And to be clear it's universal, not unlimited.
https://medium.com/@brian-curry-research/the-healthcare-maze...
There's absolutely no way the government operates more efficiency in this space.
Once again, what a crock of shit.
I support universal health care. But most of its proponents are suffer from innumeracy and magical thinking. It’s very scary to me that we’d put these people in charge of health care reform.