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The Chart That Explains Everything That Is Wrong With The US Healthcare System
We previously presented the following chart from Citi in our report on America's brief flirt with income statement austerity, although we feel we may not have emphasized it enough. So, in an attempt to remedy that situation, here is the chart that casually explains most if not everything that is wrong with the US healthcare system, currently the cause of so much political bickering and consternation... not to mention future spending.
PS. And if the chart above is not enough, here is a comparison of healthcare outlays both past and present and revenue streams, which, in the words of Citi "will unravel most any other
structural changes in the budget given enough time."
We bring up these charts again as today we are precisely 5 days away from the dead ceiling legislative (not financial) deadline, and DC is likely to come up with a straw man compromise that merely kicks the can down the road yet does nothing to resolve the main issue: America's doomed "welfare state" going concern as indicated by the above charts. It also confirms another observation: responsibility for America's untenable spending picture lies not only with D.C. - it really begins and ends with each of us.
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And while it's all the rage to blame malpractice suits for this as "defensive medicine," the dirty secret rarely told is that there is profit in all that shit. All the way from writing the order to delivering the test and cleaning up the room when it's done.
And most "outside" labs are connected with hospital owners and staff MD's. It's like interlocking directorates among large corps . . . everybody makes money from this system.
The attorneys and plaintiffs are making maybe a penny on each dollar, if that.
Triple post! A new personal best for me!
Rick Scott -> the humble taxpayer
Healthcare is OVERPRICED, it is a RIP-OFF.
True, for many reasons, but among them is that's because it's not "health" care - it's "sick" care.
Americans in general (and I speak for myself here as well) don't give a damn about their health until something bad happens and/or goes wrong and then they expect someone else to pay to have Heaven and Earth moved to put them to rights.
I'll take myself as an example - 45-years old, obese most of my adult life (and I was constantly on the fat-boy program when I was Army in my younger adult life), I only started to take it seriously when I started to develop Type II diabetes. Scared the crap out of me and, for the time being, has scared me straight. Didn't want to take 5-6 pills a day for the rest of my life (like, ahem, my parents on Medicare) so I dropped 40-pounds and got my numbers back into "normal" range. Trying to drop another 30 over the next year to make sure it never happens again. Have not felt better or healthier in 10-years. Fought-off 2 flu bugs that ran rampant through my office this spring - would almost certainly have been laid-low by at least one of them in my fatter days (6-months ago).
So shame on me, but at least I've come to the "sick" care party albeit late.
Sounds like you would have been better off if someone else had made dicisions for you.
According to Sanders, Goldman Sachs received nearly $600 billion; Morgan Stanley received nearly $2 trillion; Citigroup received $1.8 trillion; Bear Stearns received nearly $1 trillion, and Merrill Lynch received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed. In addition, some of the largest corporations in the country also received substantial bailouts, including General Electric, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon. Huge sums also went to foreign private banks and corporations including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.[38][39][40]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
I mention the costs of TARP ($800 Billion, before it was repaid in full when the FED opened its .25% Window).
Un-Employment Benefits Cost America $1 Billion Per Month for every 10% of the populace that collects benefits. So $1 Billion dollars for 10% Un-Employment Benefits, $2 Billion Dollars for 20% Un-Employment Benefits and $3 Billion Dollars for 30% Un-Employment Benefits..
Right now we have 40% Un-Employment in the United States if not more..
So, $4 Billion Dollars.. multiplied by 12 months.. equals $48 Billion dollars.
$800 Billion TARP Dollars would carry 40% Un-Employment how many years?
16 and a half PLUS Years of Un-Employment Coverage.. that is what ONE!!! (1) of the cheap Bailouts would Provide for “We the People” of Main Street..
How about $2 trillion? How about $15 Trillion that the FED has passed out ALL Around the World?
What is 6% interest on the $14 Trillion we owe as a Nation? How about the $15 Trillion the World owes the FED?
You can see why those Monthly interest payments are NOT helping Americans.. just the share Holders of the Federal Reserve.
But Austerity is what is needed?
Health Care cut backs for poor Americans is the answer?
Not having the money to pay for these things because Washington DC is filled with Lobby Whores? Who were paid to provide Tax Benefits to Corporations to move 6 million Manufacturing Jobs Off Shore? But it is the Poor people who are FUCKING YOU OVER?? Are you Fucking sure stupid?
It's a witch hunt. And the peeps are suckers.
++ Exactly.. Everyone is looking to point the finger.. Even if the math and/or common sense points to Corporate America and Bankers, it's easier for one to be a coward and blame the most needy in this country. After all, they can't afford the big propaganda tools to defend themselves..
Knock off all that logic and math, you will disturb the propaganda meme that prevails today as 'wisdom'.
Love the last paragraph you got there.
Those lobby whores really care about kids, they really do, and the assets their Parents and Grandparents have to pay up to CorporateCare and BigPharma for "research" in the Cayman islands and between the legs of high $ prostitutes.
"Mr. Jones, you have a small tumor in your stomach that needs to be removed. It will cost you $10,000 for us to look at, and $500,000 for us to remove. We are allied with Chase bank and their reverse mortgage program, or you could just hand over your retirement accounts. We care, we really do."
Best healthcare system in the world my ASS. What good is the best freeway system if you don't have a car or there is bumper to bumper traffic? We are being RAPED by corporate harpies in insurance and 'health'care.
Good luck finding a medical company that wasn't started by and/or is not run and owned by an MD.
Blame the MD's. They're the guys making the money off this system. Is it any surprise they point fingers at lawyers as the bad guys?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mor_ass_by_rif_sho_and_lar_fir_dis-rif...
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_mot_veh_dea-health-motor-vehicle-d...
Living in the US is "X-Treme"!
No surprise. Not much is spent in this country on preventative health. However, a great deal of money is spent keeping people with poor prognoses (stage IV cancer, 80 year old demented patients, class IV heart failure, end stage renal disease) alive without little ultimate improvement in their conditions. That's where most of the money goes -- ICU care and expensive drugs and procedures that buy people only a few weeks or months. Such interventions are limited in most other countries due to a lack of funds or a lack of proven efficacy. As long as other people are footing the bills -- insurance companies and the government -- and the American demographic grows older, the spending will continue to escalate.
It's burgerland here. Go to Canada and you won't see an ocean of fat people waddling around. Hospitals and medicine can only do so much. It's up to the people to live healthier and smarter lifestyles.
http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2010-05-05/story/study-homicide-leading-cause-death-among-young-black-males
Leading cause of death for young black males is homocide
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/weightloss/2010-01-13-obesity-rates_N.htm
One-third of adults in the US are obese:
• Obesity is more common among women who are black (49.6%) and Hispanic (43%) than white (33%).
•Obesity is greater than 30% in most age groups for both sexes, except for men ages 20 to 39.
•More black girls and Hispanic boys, ages 2 to 19, are overweight and obese than white children.
Ogden says the latest research shows that some of the heaviest boys are getting heavier.
Obese kids are at a greater risk of weight-related health problems such as high cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes, plus they are at a greater risk of becoming obese adults, she says.
You fucking kidding - you never been to Canada, and you talk nonsense. . Most of the woman there (except the Asian or European immigrants) are so fat, that they can barely walk through the door. They can barely fit into the office chair. Canada is incredibly obese country. I know - I spent significant chunk of my life in Canada.
Canada is fatty lover paradise!
C'mon TeaParty people...let's see a protest where you storm into a hospital and unplug the octogenarians from their ventilators....to save America!
No, just make Jimmy and Jane responsible for Great Grandma's care after a specified period of time and they'll take care of it themselves.
Need I remind you of the Terry Schiavo fiasco?
The life expectance chart is miss leading. Its the same with the the murder rates here and in Canada. You back out our Minorities and our murder rate looks just like the snow people.
The life expectance on many Indian Reservations is 32 years of age. Can you say 32 years. Same place they were in 1250 AD. They are very dangers places. They have evolved for a world, that are ancestors were in 5000 years ago. They get dropped into a modern world over night, with out any DNA changes. Blacks have a shorter life expectance then most other Americans do, do to there DNA and chosen life style's. There life style is a fuction of whats behind there eyes.
It would be interesting to see this broken out by ethnicity- I suspect US whites would show similar numbers to European whites.
I've only told you what it shows about a dozen times on ZH. Probably more.
In fact, the US violent crime rate subtracting out blacks and hispanics is lower than europe's. That's just one example.
"We" do not have a problem.
If you broke everything out by ethnicity you would see some very startling trends emerge. For example, blacks account for over half of violent crime all by themselves. Black men have up to a 75x rate of STD infection than white men. 10x the murder rate. Astoundingly higher rates of drug abuse, a 30-year test score gap that hasn't closed an inch despite trillions thrown at it.
It's time to just simply accept the obvious here instead of blaming boogeymen or the successful populations. Asians don't seem to need any help conforming to law, graduating highschool, or avoiding massive obesity rates, so it cannot be a matter of racism against nonwhites, especially when you consider the pretty shameful history of treatment of chinese and japanese in this nation.
Forget race. Compare those who had a father from birth through high school with those who didn't. Fathers who give-a-damn matter.
Excellent points trav.
Nice to see no trolls out yet with the over-played 'OMG racism!1!!111111' card.
My impression of Trash77777777:
"Keep 'em poor, I say! After all, it's not where you start and the likes of me endeavour day and night to keep you, it's the colour of your skin!"
Or verbatim,
"Asians don't seem to need any help conforming to law, graduating highschool, or avoiding massive obesity rates, so it cannot be a matter of racism against nonwhites, especially when you consider the pretty shameful history of treatment of chinese and japanese in this nation."
What a complete load of road apples. 'Shameful' indeud; at least you've
made it that far. Unfortunately it is universally stupid to compare the very different plight of one oppressed group to another just because they were/continue to be maltreated by the same Euro/Amero trash. Also, how on earth do you suppose we integrate this uncharacteristically sympathetic expression of yours with your whole 'diversity is total evil' non sequitir, Dr.Jones?
ZP: Bigots are some of the most disgusting trolls, and just like 'you can't kid a kidder'... his 'points' are only excellent to trash from the same pile.
No matter what's behind their eyes , your spelllling gives away what is behind yours.
I was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1995. Two different doctors wrote me off, basically told me I could take chemo but it would do no good. I was told to get my affairs in order because I had 3-6 months left to live. 3 large tumors in my intestines. I went to a holistic doctor (MD, DO) and he changed my life. Changed my diet and lifestyle and took many holistic treatments and supplements. Went into total remission in 3 years and have no problems since. Mainstream medicine would have put me in the ground. Nature saved me!
Gerson cancer therapy diet has been proven to work on stage 4 cancer patients, but it is ILLEGAL for a "health care professional" to recommend or even mention it to a patient. Vitamin b17 has natural cancer-fighting properties but it is ILLEGAL to sell it in a store if that store has any literature espousing the benefits of b17.
There are more people making money "fighting" cancer than there are cancer patients. Cancer can be cured naturally in many ways, but since you cannot make a nickel off a natural cure they discount natural or holistic treatments and tell you to take the lethal chemo/radiation cocktail.
I read once that over 95% of oncologists would not submit themselves to chemotherapy or radiation.
We survived cancer.
I tell you right now I would probably try surgery and take my chances. But chemo and radiation? No sir.
I got my spouse through 9 months of living hell and it was not her fault. It was worth a lifetime to see that journey completed. The doctors said that they have never seen such lab blood numbers so good until they heard she loved ice cream and milk/cheese etc. Then they understood.
Fortunately it was a specific cancer and they had a specific medicine for it. One of those is called "Red Devil" in the chemo room. The Iv if it fails has the potentail to destroy your blood vessel and the flesh/tissue in the area as well. Those who survive that have a pernament bruise that is a deep black color on the arm.
If you do go to Chemo, get a Port installed into your chest first. Then have it removed after.
What was really astounding was they would issue me 8 needles filled with a coctail of vitimins. Each day after chemo day I inject those vitamins into wife at a cost of 19,000 per needle.
I have pondered vitamins to this very day, I believed those needles saved my wife and gave her strength to rest and prepare for the next chemo day.
However, 6 times 8 needles = about 865,000 dollars more or less. that is working out to about 144,000 per year survived so far and counting.
That is just the injections, Not the surgery or the chemo; if you add that, you already exceed a million.
The Radiation? 43,000 dollars in about 2 months. The amount of radiation you recieve is sufficient to alarm my nuke rad detector. The burns took months to heal.
I posted something just a few minutes ago. Then went back up and read the posts until coming to yours. Wanted to share my experience with the Red Devil.
I had Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1998. Part of my 4 chemical cocktail was the Red Devil. If memory serves me, (and it doesn't so well after my chemo), it had to be refrigerated so when it went in they had to wrap a blanket around me to keep me warm. The last of the four chemicals would excrete out of my salivary glands with a taste so putrid I had to make sure I was chewing peppermints the whole time or I would get sick.
I was never given a vitamin cocktail afterward, but I almost died at the hands of my unsurance company. They wanted to balk at paying for my Nupagen shots which stimulates the bone marrow to produce red blood cells. I began to be so depleted for so long that my chemo schedule was all shot to hell and the cancer started to fight back. My doctor made a phone call in my presence one day and simply told the guy on the other end to patch him through to someone in accounting. When he got that guy he told him of the situation and explained to him that he could calculate how much money it would take to give me these shots at $1,000 a shot X 2 shots a month for 12 months. While he was at it he could calculate how much his company would be sued by my family if I died with the knowledge it did not have to be if I had that shot.
Then he hung up.
5 minutes later my doc received a call. 12 months later I was pronounced cured. That was 1999. I'm still here and raising the 5 kids I was told I would never have because I was supposed to be sterile as well.
God bless you, your wife and your family.
BTW, I agree. Get the chest port. I didn't. I have a lot less veins in my right hand and I have those permanent bruises on each arm. I call them my stigmata.
The U.S. has the world's highest standardized life expectancy.
See: http://www.aei.org/docLib/9780844742403.pdf - Table 1-5, p. 34 of PDF, p. 22 of report
The US and Switzerland- raw numbers give Switzerland 2.3 years, factor in "fatal injuries" and the US wins by a meager 3 months and the cost is 50% more than the surprisingly similar Swiss model. I'm not sure of all the nuances of "fatal injuries" but blaming guns for deaths doesn't really work when comparing the US to Switzerland.
I copied my post from the other thread as it has a more precise breakdown of the numbers.
The health care numbers are interesting-
Switzerland (PPP-2010), spends $5,344 and achieves a life expectancy of 82.3 years
US (2009) spends $7,960 and achieves a life expectancy of only 78.2 years
So the US spends 49% more per person and gets 5% less in return. Those calculations are actually too generous to the US because US spending in 2010 was undoubtedly more than 2009, and PPP isn't a complete purchasing power conversion ($5,344 of PPP'd CHF probably equates to only $4000-$4500 USD at the grocery, retail store, or doctor's office).
The irony here being that the MYTH that was used to sell Obummercare to the electorate is EXACTLY the health care system in SWITZERLAND. The "myth" being that a federal government mandate that individuals pruchase insurance in the private market will leverage competition and increase and pool size to reduce costs. The pool size of the entire country of Switzerland is the same as that of NEW YORK CITY.
The "reality" is more analogous to the US Congress legalizing a proctological raping of US residents to benefit statist and moneyed interests, supported by the hopes of idiots that the US Congress was capable of such novel things as actual reform and increased efficiency (at something other than lining their and their benefactors' pockets).
Perhaps the BLS can redefine "year" in the US to something like 18 months along with their desired "inflation" changes and then everything should be fine (at least in the minds of the idiots who blindly believe in government).
"Everyone" (the always-present, talking-head "experts") assumes that dollars spent have a direct correlation to the lifespan after a certain point. Ever hear of diminishing returns?
What's really happening in US vs other counties is this:
Everything Added to Food in the United States (EAFUS):
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/fcn/fcnNavigation.cfm?rpt=eafusLis...
Number of records: 3960. That's right, there are more additives you have consumed than the number of different natural foods out there you will likely try in your lifetime! Do you know how many of them were seriosly tested for safety? I'll give you a hint: you won't need more that 10 fingers to count...
Do you know how many additives are used in Europe and how many have been tested for safety?
Another issue with statistics, especially from WHO. It has to do with reporting of data. Most countires deliberatly manipulate what they report. For example, if a baby dies at birth in US, it will count towards infant mortality. In some countries, they decided that if the baby dies before 5 days it is not necessary to report towards infant mortality. If it lives for 5 days, then dies, then it's reported. etc... etc... etc... The examples are numerous...
But don't worry friends!!! The US has been really good with publishing Bullshit numbers in the last few years, especially related to CPI and other econ. numbers. So!!!! I think the health-related reporting is about to take the page out of the same playbook.
Just in time to show how wonderful Obama-care is!!! Give it a few years and all the numbers will blow all the countries right out of the water!!! O-bam!! problem solved...
I am reposting my comments from the earlier article here:
A major point regarding healthcare is that up to 40% of the total is spent on 1% of the population. The majority of healthcare dollars are spent on the first year of life and the last year of life. I have not checked recently, many European countries do not treat premature infants born under 25 weeks gestational age. My twins, born at 29 weeks and not having any major problems generated a bill over $250,000 for their combined 7 weeks hospitalization. It is much higher amount for babies at 22, 23 weeks. Many babies survive at this age, treatment is as much a philosophical and ethical decision as it is financial.
There are thousands of people in nursing homes unable to live without 24/7 care. Feeding tubes, tracheostomies. They come to the hospital all the time with pneumonia, sepsis from UTIs or bedsores and are admitted to ICU for 2 weeks, hospitalized a month and then sent back to nursing home to repeat the cycle. Futile care.
Switzerland does not provide free medical care to millions of illegal immigrants who know they don't have to pay if they go to the ER and that there are medicaid programs that will pay for children's care, even pay for OB care during pregnancy. Federal law, EMTALA, states they must be seen and treated by providers/hospitals.
A study by Jackson and Associates a couple years ago pegged the amount of defensive medicine ordered in US because of fear of lawsuits at $300 billion/year. I see it every day. Someone falls and hits their head, do they really need a CT scan? 4800 Emergency departments in US, if half of them order one superfluous CT per day that is $24 million/day, $8.7 billion/year.
If we decided not to provide futile care and enacted tort reform the savings would easily be over $1 Trillion/year. No one would get hurt, except for some lawyers, and we would be providing health care that is more rational and compassionate than current system, which is providing the exact results it was designed to achieve.
We can add a separate discussion about uninsured in America. How many chose to be uninsured and how many are "uninsurable" due to current medical conditions? I'll give you a hint, the latter number is much smaller.
Regarding payment, it's a big game. You see the "rack rate" which is billed but the actual reimbursement is much smaller. I think I averaged about $9/patient from Medicaid a few years back, doesn't even cover malpractice insurance.I remember a patient from a few years back. 22 year old girl with RLQ pain. Classic symptoms and presentation for appendicitis. Surgeon decides to forego the CT and do the appendectomy. Turns out she had gonorrhea induced pelvic inflammatory disease. He spent two years fighting that lawsuit for "unnecessary surgery." Now he won't even look at a patient without a scan.
I rode a MRI once. 16,000 dollars done and done within the hour.
Never again.
I also had a bad appendix and only the doctor's fingers found it and they went ahead and cut it out. It worked out well enough.
Once bitten, twice shy. I have seen similar behavior with surgeons as well. Underscores the complexity of the problem really. A young healthy person who fell and hit their head, no loss of consciousness, normal exam does not need a Head CT. A patient with an acute abdomen with high likelihood to require surgery, maybe not so clear. Surgeons used to quote a negative appendicitis rate of 15-20%. Widespread use of CT scan has decreased rate to 1%.
The health care system here is a perfect storm for profiteering off the engineered ill. The complete lack of exercise, lack of knowledge about true nutritional needs, and abundance of things which could pass as food all lead to short lifespans while draining cash at a quick rate. Also, people need to learn to deal with death. If someone is being kept 'alive' by life support on the tail end of an end-stage disease, there needs to be a time where people need to say goodbye. Hospitals will gladly bill insurance, government, next-of-kin until people come to the realization months later. (Advanced directives are far too uncommon, and that is a great thing for the bilking of insurance and Medicare/aid)
Also, the incentives are way off. If I am staying healthy and hitting the gym, yet still paying the same as the 300 lb, 40 oz. cola guzzling guy in the office, what is my incentive (I know, health, but enough people would put current money before future wellness in a heartbeat). Dropping off my plan would be an option in the short term, but I am still at risk for being injured due to someone else's actions, and being wrung out by the hospital billing department.
So, I either pay for others slow hand-to-mouth suicide by plan premiums and/or taxes no matter what happens. I can't see how this scenario will right itself.
Employers should move toward a health savings account with a high deductible. It is amazing how more people will be engaged when paying for medical care comes out of their own accounts. That is an incentive to stay healthy right there. Many people do not realize they can negotiate the price of office visits, tests and procedures. My wife needed an MRI, hospital wanted $3000. After negotiating, we paid $761.50. It would be amazing to see what some real competition for health care dollars would do to the current system.
The price mechanism is another problem with the medical system. Since prices do not see the light of day until after you receive the bill, there is nothing to go on for the uninsured. Some of the itemized expenses are on a level of insanity not seen in many other industries. It seems the standard is to make questioning the pricing system as painful as possible prior to a procedure. Even asking about a ballpark price on a scheduled procedure (a family member had a shoulder surgery scheduled months ahead) was received with a 'how dare you' overtone. I am guessing it will be a sub-32 degree day in hell before hospitals and clinics voluntarily release average procedure prices to the public, which is what needs to happen to clear up the opaque-at-best pricing system.
That butterfly that saves you a whole bunch of IV jabs in the lab is about 35 dollars more or less.
Someone should make a open source website related to actual billing for identifiable items used in hosptials clinics etc. It will make it clear to all so inclined to learn what the smock costs or the food etc.
They have been slowly doing that for decades. I started work 30 years ago and paid a pittance. Now this here Obamacare reveals the true horror of just how much one can be charged...
It's best to manage risk in your world and do what you can not to get hurt or sick.
Let grandma die!
Grandma cooks the cookies.. and am sure some would happily burn down your World in total for one of Grandma's cookies.. so watch your mouth, some people might be offended.. somewhere.
The World is filled with Crazies! I would not want one of them to get you over Grandma's Cookies.
Just needed to point out a few things.
In the USA, health care providers are incentivized to provide procedures and treatments, not to prevent illness in the first place - a classic capitalist fail.
European countries can pay for their socialized health systems because taxpayers in the USA pay for their defense. If the USA stopped giving money to NATO and removed all of our bases in European countries, you can be pretty sure that the generous social programs in Europe would soon dissappear.
Preventing illness is not a doctor's job. It's yours. You should only put your life in someone else's hands after you've stumbled in some way, not before. Be your own doctor or be dependent on your betters. Tho I'm guessing these words aren't meaning anything to you if you think being your own expert on matters of your own life would be too hard for yu. Sorry, if that's true.
Apparently you get your exercise jumping to conclusions. I prefer a daily regimen of running, weights and yoga, avoiding red meat, and abstaining from alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
Regardless, you overestimate the intelligence of people. I can assure you that there are otherwise well educated people who never pay attention to diet or exercise and wouldn't stop eating huge calorie laden cheeseburgers unless explicitly told to by a doctor. Ditto on exercise, particularly the sort that prevents back problems later on. This is preventive medicine, makes nobody any money and which is implicitly discouraged by the current medical system in the USA.
Exercise is for lazy people, and it doesn't do much for them either.
Well educated people aren't actually well educated, IMO.
No, I don't overestimate the intelligence of others, which is why this problem can't just go away until lots of lame people just go away.
Corporations love nothing like a repeat customer.
No, I would expect the deficits, debt, and defense spending of those countries to rise (might even lower their unemployment).
I do not understand why the US pays $1Trillion/year on defense and the next closest country, China, spends $150 billion. We could cut our defense budget in half but military-industrial complex wants the $$$ and pays for lobbyists. Half a trillion here, half a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
Having said that, I do not agree with your post. What the US subsidizes is new drugs, new technology and innovation which other countries get for almost nothing, while US taxpayer is footing the bill.
That's because Healthcare is a sign of Sickness. Healthcare does not prevent Sickness.
Health care is a human right... only in America is ones ability to pay a factor in whether you live or die... profit over compassion... the American way.
What? More so than food or water or shelter? It's not in the constitution, not in the bible, where is it? Really, healthcare is a way of bailing out those who have failed, which is nice, and I've failed before, too, but to say it's a human right...?
Bullshit. Try "health care (maintenance of ones health) is a responsibility".
And where do the corporations fit into your responsibility philosophy?
There is one word that stands in the way of effective health care in America... profit.
Corporations exist to provide a necessary product at a profit. If a corporation can not provide the product at a profit it goes away. Along with the jobs of its employees and the product it provided.
If said corporation is in the Health Care Business it provides care for those who are sick. If it can not do so at a profit, it shuts down. Good luck if you get sick getting care when no one around you has the skills, facilities and tools to do so.
If a corporation fails its customers (patients in this case), the customers will shift their business to a different corporation that will. Simple.
Their is only one responsibility. Profit.
If the corporation can not produce the care or product that is expected by its customers at the best market prices, customers go elsewhere. So do the profits.
The problem is that ugly little word. Altruism. Hospitals are required to place care above all else. But, when all else includes profits and you are managed by government altruists who will have a job whether you make a profit or not, you are no longer a for profit corporation but an abomination.
You are a hybrid that must try to keep its doors open while providing a service for free to anyone who demands it. You are forced to care for Juana Martinez from Juarez whos baby's daddy just broke her arm for free. Now, how the hell do you pay for the x-ray machine, or the MRI, or the technician that operates it? You overcharge the next patient who has insurance.
Or you shut down you doors.
Bam! Better than my words.
You have no right to make every doctor in the country your slave.
There is no such thing as a "right" that obliges someone else to provide it to you.
So Canadian doctors are slaves?
Nope, they're not.
But neither is it the case that Healthcare is a Human Right in Canada - after all, they pay through the nose for it (in taxes, of course).
Here's a hint, because you obviously need it: if you have to pay for something (either directly or indirectly) it's not a right.
You are clearly very confused citizen. No need to get into circular logic with you. Next time, buy a ticket to Canada, and spend some time there.
Right now, you are talking garbage. Don't drink too much whisky, save some money and travel. Travels are educational - you know?
Wow - I hope nobody is paying you to be that stupid all at once.
Farewell.
So slavery is a human right? Because any product that must be obtained by force as a right requires the enslavement of those who produce the product. Yo are confused. I don't blame you for being confused.
A right is a naturally ocurring condition that is necesary for a man to be a man. Your right to protect your life with arms if necesary is a right. Your ownership of a firearm is not.
Your right to speak without government censorship is a right. Your ownership of a printing press (or a computer and Internet access) is not.
Your right to peaceably assemble is a right. Renting a meeting hall is not.
Your right to own private property as the natural result of your production is a right. The government stealing my money to pay your rent is not.
Check your premises.
Man that is some murky shit there.
Why do you find it murky? I thought it was fairly clear, with examples, but perhaps I need to provide more clarity. Please elaborate.
The more clarity, the more rediculous. Invented concepts are like compounding lies....
dup
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Ooops, looks like somebody PPPeed in those figures.
To generate these PPP figures, somebody, presumably a few World Bank economist interns with a quick review by a World Bank economist, had to decide how much of the cost differential between, for example, German health care and US health care, is attributable to quantity and quality of service provided, and how much is attributable to pricing.
How any professional woud rely on PPP numbers is beyond me. But then, this is Citi.
This data is really skewed by the way statistics are gathered.
The most glaring difference is the infant mortality.
Most countries only count infant mortatlity after the first week or so, the U.S. stats count the infant mortality of all births.
So no viaable premature etc all count against the infant mortality. A percent or so of 1 week life expectancy really skews the numbers.
Solution: It's called single payer!
Corporations would actually love to have single payer (they don't want to be health care experts). Innovation would love single payer - people could leave to start their ownbusinesse without having to worry about health care costs.
Who would hate singel payer? Insurance companies, the very rich, doctors.
Tell you what - Let's vote on it. See who wins.
A single payor would create a monopoly. With current political structure, the Have's with the $ could still manipulate the system to create favorable conditions for themselves, i.e. an unfair advantage. No free market, no competition for business. Look at Great Britain. The people who are on gov't insurance get placed on waiting lists or denied care. People who can afford to pay out of pocket get their elective procedures done on Saturday and bypass the waiting lists. Believing a single payor system is the solution, or that it would not quickly morph into a two tiered model is fallacy.
We have a tiered system now. No doubt.
I would take a single that is heartless and let the ones that take
better care avoid it out of fear and the ones that can pay to avoid it
do so.
Seems fair to me.
Single payer, yes. But we define single payer differently Sparky. If I go to the Doctor, I am the single payer for my care. That is the true solution. If the doctor/hospital does not offer the care I want at a price I can afford I go elsewhere.
No, they wouldn't. Only benefit to government payer would be writing a check to the government vs. the insurance company. And would completely eliminate all choices as to cost of coverage and benefits offered to their employees. We already have a single payer system. Medicare/Medicaid. It sucks for everyone other than the ones receiving free care. Ask hospitals and doctors if they could survive on Medicare/Medicaid patients alone.
What the hell does starting a new business has to do with writing a fat health insurance check to the government instead of the insurance company you shopped for has anything to do with innovation?
Sparky, when you spend 200k and 8+ years of your life becoming a Dr. you get to become really rich. Working at McDonalds...not so much.
Well, if voting is the way to solve this lets vote on other things. I am sure we could get enough white people in the US to vote black slavery back in. And since there are more men than women in the US, how about we vote legalized rape of all red heads? How about we all vote that Mexicans can only work for minimum wage as gardeners for ever. And their kids must work as gardeners and maids. Sounds good to you Sparky?
Funny, you claim that health care is a human right then advocate slavery and mob rule.
Fuck the insurance companies, and their filthy owners.
Once we establish high quality single-payer healthcare, cut all that unneccessary fat, we will have the worlds best health care system for all, regardless of income, and not the third world healthcare we have now.
I am shocked, by the number of morons, that cry and glorify this third world healthcare we have now. They never went past the local corner's liquor store, and haven't seen how it is properly done in advanced countries.
I agree with the prior poster. Close all fucking military bases, and spend the savings on healthcare and other worthy projects (renewable energy, infrastructure, social security...). We do not need to go bankrupt, to defend Israel, or Europeans against each other.
This what conservative thinking should be. Smart country, not a country of crooks.
Please point out for me where in the document that constituted the Federal government is the power to tax in order to:
Who defines what is a worthy project?
Whose money is to be confiscated for these "worthy" projects?
Who is going to do the spending?
If we are bankrupt (and we are), where are the savings? After all going into debt slower does not mean you are saving, just going into debt slower. Unless you mean that we should trim the budget to be lower than the current tax receipts in which case cutting off all overseas operations will not do it. The 2010 budgeted expenditures for all DoD operations, including "overseas contingencies" was $685.1B about half of the deficit. Even shutting down the DoD completely, a constitutional requirement covered under "providing for the common defense" doesn't get you half way there.
So, what else could we cut to get there? Lets see... according to the CBO the total Social Security expenditures in 2010 where $706B, $21B more than all DoD expenditures
Medicare and Medicaid were $793B
Considering that during 2010 the Tax revenues were $2.16T and expenditures $3.46T, the budget deficit of $1.4T would require shutting down not only the DoD but either Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security before seeing any savings.
But you clearly don't want to shut down Social Security (since it is in your list of worthy projects), so we would shut down the DoD and Medicare/Medicaid before breaking even.
So, please elusidate what you do mean and what you would cut.
Length of life is not the same as quality. Wouldn't you rather enjoy the now, and lose a couple of years out on the old, slow and crippled end of life?
We'll check back with you in your 70s, Mr. Daltrey
Three more years mate.
The charts are interesting for what they don't reveal.
Aside from the some methodology issues mentioned previously, comparing the U.S. to, for instance, Denmark, it like comparing Denmark to, say, Beverly Hills or Chevy Chase or Palm Beach. What is actually striking is how close to these ethnically homogenous countries the U.S. is. Our mortality statistics suffer from deaths in childbirth of babies born into cultures in which pre-natal care is completely unknown. Just ask a OB/GYN in any municipality in the U.S. With the higher crime rates and lower education that we import (and count!), the other countries in this list should have life expectancies much higher than the U.S., not just 1-5 years.
The Japanese life expectancy is overstated. There has been a widespread, generations-long defruading of the Japanese retirement system. Deaths just didn't get recorded, and descendants collected. This has been practiced sort of like Greek tax paying, a societal problem excused because we all are doing it.
Throw into this the R&D expense implicit in U.S. healthcare which is not contained in the expense of other countries' healthcare, and you have an exaggeration in the per capita numbers.
These charts don't explain whatever might be wrong with the U.S. healthcare system, but they do appeal to the non-thinker.
Most developed countries do not pay for drug development, look at the number of new molecules that are introduced globally compared to US. They are content to let Drug companies pay for R&D here and US citizens have to pay the cost in higher prescription prices. The $ cannot be recouped from other populations because their governments employ price fixing and do not allow costs to be passed on to their populations. US citizens are subsidizing the drug development costs for the rest of the world.
Ok, but listen to the moans of pain drifting down the ward past the breakroom packed with nurses so callous and burned out that they wont take a few moments to get a doctor's orders to relieve the pain.
In fact being in a area with a very high level of medicine abuse OUTSIDE of a hospital makes it easier for the staff not to give you pain meds.
The charts are accurate. The USA has the highest healthcare costs of any G20 nation and just about the worst life expectancy.
And yes, that's because the USA has lots of poor black, morbidly obese citizens who live off KFC and sit on the lardy asses watching X factor.
So the graph you are missing is the one that relates life expectancy to Income Inequality. And guess what? It's a damn near perfect fit. Countries with low income inequality have high life expectancy.
And if you care to apply the same axes to a graph of US states, it still works. States with greater income inequalities have lower life expectancies: check out the UK book "the spirit level" by Wilkinson and Pickett for countless graphs like the above with countless academic references.
Poor white people have the same problem as the minorities. And there are plenty of obese middle class Americans too, and some rich ones.
poor whites typically have lower rates of the problems compared to minorities.
Race is a far larger factor than income...income doesn't cause these problems; they and the poverty are caused by other factors.
What a load of ignorant trash.
Obesity isn't a function of income inequality.
Without the exact source and formula for income "inequality" I don't think "damn near perfect" means shit. There could be many causal and coincidental factors, the first that jumps to mind is State controlled access to health care. Frankly, the inequality in incomes between the upper CLASS and the lower CLASS in Switzerland is orders of magnitude greater than in the US if you throw out a fraction of the top 1%, who mathematically can't even significantly skew the life expectancy data of the broader population.
Medical care is available regardless of income or ethnic diversity, except the quality of care in prisons and community clincs may take longer.
Well at least by keeping the world safe for KFc BurgerKing and Mcd
we are bringing those heathens up to first world status.
We got that going for us.
bringing obeseity to the world - some pride in that anyway.
income inequality is caused mostly by massive discrepancies in inherent aptitude. Just like grade inequality in the classroom is.
What complete and utter twaddle.
Poor People....period. Bad diets because food that is bad for heath is cheap. It matters not the race. In fact, more white people get government assistance than any other group. Stereotype much?
idiot. There are substantially MORE white people than blacks. There should be more receiving assistance if assistance rates match population. However, they do not. Blacks are receiving assistance at far higher rates than whites.
Stereotypes wouldn't be stereotypes if they weren't based on valid statistical generalizations.
Poor people in india seem to manage to avoid gigantic obesity rates. Your entire premise is full of shit
And your brain tumour is swollen with fructose.
All: keep in mind that for Trash7777 `valid statistical generalisations` are the same thing as `prejudiced bigoted extrapolations`.
I'm an MD too. I think you guys have hit all the salient points in some way or another. To summarize:
1 Americans have higher rates of illness due to eating too much, exercising too little, eating unnutricious even toxic food. This leads to obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, severe arthritis of knees, hips, and lower back, and higher rates of cancer.
2 Drug companies keep pushing out the next great drug most of which are no more effective than the older drugs. They do this to sell very expensive patented drugs and keep generic drugs suppressed.
3 Doctors like me are trained to over diagnose, over test, and over treat. Part of this is simply a medical culture that strives to never miss anything, born out of decent motives. Part of it is defensive to cover our ass in case something is going on. Given how common lawsuits are it's safest for us to order all the extra tests.
As far as over treating, someone pointed out what an enormous fraction of health care is spent on the first and especially last years of life. You have no idea how many billions are spent on demented vegetables with serious medical illness that practically live in the hospitals there last year of life.
4 We MDs are not taught much about promoting healthy nutrition and alternative treatments. There is no conspiracy that I am aware of to keep cancer curing medicines off the market, but, there is no doubt that a diet rich in toxins and devoid of natural supplements contributes enormously to our cancer death rate, and other illnesses.
Perfect post.
+10
Also an MD. 3/4 of all human error derives from the open mouth...and in the ICU we are overwhelmed with unintended consequences of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and calories that create human suffering and extremely expensive care...and bad outcomes.
+100 Amen! Seek and you will find alternatives to acidifying pharmaceuticals.
Thank you for your post.
Beautifully said, Doc. Thanks.
IK - well said. We need more MDs like you!
This is all very easy to understand ... the US has 6% of he world's population and 70% of the world's lawyers
A lawyer is a invaluable asset. When one is sharp as a tack and willing to do battle in the legal arena on your behalf then you are to have a good chance of success.
I was issued a lawyer after a car got under my rig once. The initial interview ended the entire case then and there because my lawyer's investigation revealed so many motives and causes as to show that the man deliberately put the vehicle there, on his employer's lot no less.
I ran into another one who wanted to pay for meal. I said I am a driver and am accustomed to giving meals to guests and friends, she said that she was a claims lawyer making 6 figures a year and my little crappy driving job could not provide for the guests. So that little go around was nothing less than a cross exam and quite sharp as well.
And no I did not marry her... shucks.
if you just remove accidental deaths and homicides, i believe the U.S. is #1 in life expectancy. Statistics can not be trusted when you don't understand how they are calculated.
Premature death due to disease, war or mass suicides by drugs & alcohol could reduce both Social Security and Medicare outlays longer term.
That's really funny... yeah, let's strip out all the homicide victims when we consider life expectancy. After all most of the homicide victims aren't "real" people anyway.
I'm intrigued by the idea that the USA has more "accidental deaths" than other countries.
The problem is that the USA is the most unequal society on the planet:
You have a massive underclass that live hand to mouth and that have to eat the cheapest crap, and cannot afford expensive leisure activities.
You have the highest murder rate in the world (OK apart from South Africa) because you have a massive underclass that has a major drug habit to fund.
You have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world (52 per 1000 15-19 year olds) because you have a massive underclass and you don't do sex education or provide social services to teach girls how to avoid getting knocked up.
Comparisons with the USSR are meaningless : the USSR was a 3rd world economy and everyone died young. Compare life expectancy in the USA today with that in Cuba. Which is higher?
In modern industrialized nations there is a point at which the next step in increasingg life expectancy shows strong correlation with reducing income inequality.
You tread on dangerous ground in this post.
The sheep are too strongly conditioned to question the existence of the pen.
most of his presumptions are bullshit.
Teenage girls know how to avoid getting knocked up; everyone does.
The problem is the impulse control issues that the most highly-knocked up population has. These same issues lead to all the other negative indicators.
I question the sanity of those who think that things can ever be "equalized" when the basic fact is that humans are not equal
Bristol Palin knew how not to get knocked up but with her abstinence training, it only took a couple of wine coolers for her to get pregnant anyway.
Hillary knew bill would never get her pregrant. Thank god for Vince Foster.
Most unequal society on the planet? The USA? Not Saudi Arabia? Not India? Not China? Those countries literally have millionaires and billionaires in one part of town and thousands of people living in card board boxes on the other side of town. And those poor people have no access to anything resembling modern medicine, decent food, clean water. Sure we could do better but for crying out loud do yourself a favor and visit some of the worlds poor. You'd be shocked.
Longevity and compound interest do mitigate income inequality, except among the spendthrifts who never learn to live within their means.
yes, the US probably has the highest inequality between the basic aptitude of its populations. Combined with an elite population that averages IQ 120+, you have a 3rd world population averaging 85.
Our teen pregnancy and homicide rates come from the latter population. It should not be expected that a population with very low attributes should excel.
Poverty does not cause crime, crime causes poverty. Or to be more accurate, the innate factors that lead to criminal behavior also lead to poverty.
That's a bit harsh but spot on. I work with the lower 1/3, both races, and it's not opportunity they lack it's a lack of good parents, and low IQs and high mental illness. These people simply can't.
"both" races? What happened to the others?
As far as good parents, no...they sometimes get adopted into good families and the studies demonstrate that they trend very closely to their biology, not their environment.
If you remove yourself from the big city and live in a good quiet rural area with adequate services you find that your own vitals (Blood pressure etc) will drop down to where they should have been and eliminate many unnecessary visits to the doctor.
Now I have a heart/lung sitaution that will kill me someday, but life at the moment is outstanding! Who is not to know if a Bus will run me over tomorrow morning? We know not what our future has for us. A heart beat from enternity we are all.
Half the people in the heart doctor's office are way sicker than I am and I intend to stay away from there for many more years.
,,,,
European countries do not count preemie's as viable, and therefore a preemie dying is not counted as a death. In the USA all preemie's are counted after a certain # of weeks and are included in death rate. This makes a huge difference in life expectancy tables. The socialized life expectancy rates are full of shit, and as usual, statistics aren't worth spit.
Looking at the chart, you'd think there is a huge difference in life expectancy between USA and #1 Japan. But the numbers say USA is 78.2 years, and Japan is 83 years. Not a big difference, really. The cost is another story. Americans are being scammed into paying way too much for healthcare due to lawyers, drug lobby, and all the usual suspects. We have rotten diets & exercise habits too. It all adds up. I pay $11,000 per year for insurance for my wife and kids, it's way too much. I am a good sheep and do what I'm told, but also planning to leave this country someday if I can swing it.
Japan is interesting - they smoke like chimneys (for the past 30 years Japanese males have smoked at twice the rate of American males) and therefore should all be dropping like flies according to reasoning of a long line of Surgeons General and tobacco shysters the US, living any years longer is simply not possible (or perhaps the current Surgeon General should go on diet before her fat ass keels over from a heart attack). Given the trend changes over the decades involved and different ways to cut the data you can come up with higher or lower comparisons, but I don't see any way BLS the numbers to say that the consumption rates are higher or equal in the US (same goes for the underlying OECD data on South Korea, Greece, and Spain).
Smoking cig's isn't bad like you've been lead to believe. Do some international research on smoking weed and tobacco, maybe try using some thought, too. I didn't start smoking until well into my adult years, after careful consideration and the realization that it could do me a lot of good, like sunlight, if done right. Yes, the sun leads to cancer, but it also prevents it, depending on you.
Actually the difference in life expectancy is quite a lot, since it refers to an average. It would be interesting to see more specific data on Japan. I have a sense the food culuture among the younger population has changed quite dramatically to the worse in the past decade or two, which at some point should show up in the figures. Then again, there are so many variables (working habits, vacation, stress levels, etc, etc) to isolate.
You haven't visited lately. Go see for yourself. If you really open yours eyes, you'll see that the population is much healthier than in the US. Why? If you're American, most likely you don't have clue, otherwise you'd be healthy too.
Why can't we vote on comments?
The US has the lowest viable birth age in the world because we are more advanced than the rest of the world. We have the most advanced IVF treatments and thus the most high risk births. This is not rocket science and to think Tyler Durden is a socialist in saying that money equals quality Im appalled! I think something no one talks about is that americans consume more high fructose corn syrup than any country. 20% of americans have a non-alcoholic-fatty-liver which compromises life expectancy like cirrhosis. Let's try to be objective, guys. That's why we come here; remember? I work in healthcare and i see the fleecing but the fleecing here is just like the fleecing in the UK or Sweden...okay maybe it's worse in New Jersey where it costs twice as much as the Iowa to care for a medicare patient. Obviously more jewish porsche drivers there which is poor taste on a couple levels isn't it? Semitic Jew patronizing Porsche? Government employee fleecing tax payers?
The point in my first sentance was if a french baby is born still at 33 weeks it is not factored into their infant mortality rates. Ours factors in something like 22 weeks which is much lower than anyone.
Now that i read that again that is a very very substantial difference. I'm sure some intelligent doctor somewhere has done the study if USA used 33 weeks instead of 22 our rates would be #1 in the world *2.
Our health care costs and our dismal life expectancy are a direct result of our corporate food system. HFCS, CAFOs and GMO plants are making Americans sick. this is our system, Big Ag makes us sick so Big Pharma can sell us drugs.
One has to completely drop out of the conventional food system in order to stay healthy. Darwins law is going to sort all this out. I am just hoping we can keep the laws in place that label foodstuffs, GMO or not? We fought hard for this labeling and will have to continue to fight to keep it.
lol, that's not it. you can't eat your way to a long life. we do have an epidemic of blaming everything other than ourselves tho.
We have the best healthcare system in the world....so says Rush and Sean and Laura and Sarah and most other conservatives and libertarians.
That's because in America's healthcare system our unicorns shit healing skittles.
The numbers do not lie folks. I know that liers can lie about numbers. But we do not have the best healthcare system in the world by any metric.
What we do have is the best sickcare system in the world. To be so obese, diabetic, sedentary, infused with carcinogens from the stuff we eat, to the air we breathe and the crap we drink, given to us in super-sized industrial-ag quantities, it is a COMPLETE wonder that our life span is not lower than parts of Russia.
Yes, we are the best in long term emergency care.....but HEALTH care? Give me a break.
seniors really piss me off!
Wow! The main source of health problems in the US is big industry and big government pollution. The oil and gas industry, the food processing industry, the sewage industry just to name a few. The shame is to fix the production cycle and make it safe would only cost a few cents per customer. Hydrogen sulfide is a full spectrum poison that effects every system in the in the body. Have you every smelt the rotten egg sulfur smell? Of course you have, we all have. Well boys and girls that is nerve gas. Oh, at 500ppm one breath and you are dead. If the dose does not kill, you may not see the damage for hours or days-so you never associate the exposure with the damage-but industry and the government know and cover it up. Poison gas and oil is called sour gas or sour oil. The government and food processors call poison hydrogen sulfide an odor problem. Really, check it out. Do you have sewer lift station near you? Notice the inverted J vent pipe. Just the right size to get you kids to take a wiff as they look inside-in the US we like to get them sick before they get too old that way we can make a lot of money on the health care system. Remember, we only treat symptoms here, we never look for the disease or source of poison-be it food or Hydrogen Sulfide. Yes, it has been around forever but it is now being used by the wealthy to keep the poor and their children poor by giving them a good shot of brain damage. Food is the least of our problems.
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One thing is for sure, if you happen to be unlucky enough to get some terrible disease, you are likely far better off here in the US. Lose your kidneys past 50 yo in many countries and it's curtains. How about heart surgery? Need a bone marrow transplant? Well if you live in europe, good luck with that.
Unfortunately, the stats don't really tell the whole story in the USA's highly regulated system. I'd venture to say that a massive proportion of the overall healthcare expenses in the US are derived not from the delivery of care, but rather bloated overhead for the army of paper shufflers needed to dot the I's and cross the T's for medicare and private billing, various regulatory and compliance issues, various joint hospital commisions, and the like. Oh and how can we forget the malpractice industry. The US has more lawyers per capita than any country in the world and guess what, they all have to make a living.
There is a great deal of waste in the system, most of it completely extraneous to the delivery of care. The more no value added people and paper you put in between the doctor and the patient, the less quality you are likely to achieve and the more it is likely to cost.
Fig 3 is useful information but the international comparisons are dubious for a number of reasons.
As a number of commentators have pointed out, life expectancy is not simply a matter of health care. Life style is a big factor and a minority with really bad lifestyles distorts the averages. In addition, the actual stats depend on how different countries count these matters. For instance, I understand some countries, like the US, include every birth in calculating their life expectancies, while some other countries exclude early infant deaths, ie your life only figures in the stats if you make it past a certain age. The latter arrangement exaggerates true life expectancy.
On the expenditure side, again there are differences between countries in what they include, in particular, how much old age care makes it into the "health expenditure" stats, either explicitly or in a disguised fashion. Then there are a number of specific factors:
First, health care is labor intensive. So more affluent countries, with higher labor costs will, ceteris paribus, have higher healthcare costs.
Second, the US is the most litigious country on earth and that imposes huge costs on US healthcare, both through medical insurance and unnecessary testing and treatment done to protect against litigation. There are few such legal suits in countries with nationalized care because the government legislates against it. So part of the US "healthcare costs" is actually "lawyer benevolent funding".
Third, there is the high cost of government regulation imposed on US healthcare (which also, coincidentally, provides good opportunities for lawyers). Regulation is not so intrusive and costly in nationalized health care systems (except to deter private practice). Governments don't tend to impose inconvenient regulation on themselves, just on the private sector.
Then there is the market price discrimination in the sale of pharmaceuticals and medical devices. Prices for these are in general far higher in the US than in other developed countries, partly because of the bargaining power of government purchasing in many other countries and partly because their "ability to pay" is lower where less affluent. Given this situation, drug companies need the excessive prices they charge in the US to cover their costs and make a good profit. Just as in defense, in health care, Europe and other Western countries have long been getting a free ride at the expense of the US. This will continue until the US essentially makes it illegal for pharmaceutical companies to price discriminate against the US (ie sell their product at a higher price in the US than they charge in other developed countries (including China)). When that happens, healthcare expenditure in those comparison countries will increase, while dropping somewhat in the US.
Quite a few posts talking about the difference in diet between America and Japan. Funny how I just happened to come across this yesterday.
http://mytechnologyworld9.blogspot.com/2011/07/japans-school-meals-look-healthy.html
Would you like to supersize that order of broccoli??
I have never understood the "insurance companies are evil" thesis. Premiums go up because the costs for services they're having to cover are up.
And medical cost inflation is not just because of malpractice insurance (although it is certainly a problem not being addressed) as much as it is that we have an increasingly unhealthy society reminiscent of WALL-E and all the other things mentioned above.
I am certainly in favor of one form of regulation: We need stricter health standards to prevent people from poisioning themselves with fast food and all this other shit that is absolutely driving up healthcare costs for the rest of the responsible people. It would probably be worth paying people money for being healthy and docking fat ass people money for being just that. Not opposed for docking smokers, drinkers, etc even though I fall into some of those categories. If you choose to do this, you can pay out of pocket for the financial risk you pose on the rest of the taxpaying public.
Clearly, this disgusts me.