04-09-2017, 09:47 AM
We have the most expensive medical-care system in the world. The chart does not give enough data for financial analysis of the causes, but private payments alone are about half of what America pays on average per person -- and that is more than the total payments for medical care per person in some countries. Public and private expenditure is similarly high; indeed they are about equal. Amounts per capita for both public expenditure and private expenditure on medical care are both higher than what is paid in other countries in total. I am not sure that we get better results except for those in the business of medical care. .
If this were transportation, it would be as if the only cars that we could buy were over-priced marques and all the roads (even dirt roads) had heavy tolls for use. We would find that anything that required transportation would be fiendishly expensive in contrast to comparable costs in other countries. Employers would be setting up (slum) employee housing and company stores next to places of mass employment just to keep labor costs down. Those in the highway business would be telling people the glories of using their overpriced cars or driving on their overpriced tollways. There would be huge public-sector spending on subsidies for the transportation industry, and those subsidies would feed the bottom lines of transportation companies. Meanwhile, all else gets impoverished.
I know of Americans going to Mexico for medical care. Mexico may be no paradise for physicians, but Mexican physicians and pharmacists welcome American patients. Mexico does not have profits-first policy to allow Big Pharma to gouge customers. Mexico is a poor country, but the difference between American medical costs and Mexican medical costs might be a good reason to retire in Mexico. That's about $7000 a year.
Do Americans have higher medical costs due to bad habits? At least we do not smoke much by world standards. We are not bigger drinkers than the world average. We are not more sedentary. We simply have an extreme example of profits-first medicine that no other nation would tolerate.
If this were transportation, it would be as if the only cars that we could buy were over-priced marques and all the roads (even dirt roads) had heavy tolls for use. We would find that anything that required transportation would be fiendishly expensive in contrast to comparable costs in other countries. Employers would be setting up (slum) employee housing and company stores next to places of mass employment just to keep labor costs down. Those in the highway business would be telling people the glories of using their overpriced cars or driving on their overpriced tollways. There would be huge public-sector spending on subsidies for the transportation industry, and those subsidies would feed the bottom lines of transportation companies. Meanwhile, all else gets impoverished.
I know of Americans going to Mexico for medical care. Mexico may be no paradise for physicians, but Mexican physicians and pharmacists welcome American patients. Mexico does not have profits-first policy to allow Big Pharma to gouge customers. Mexico is a poor country, but the difference between American medical costs and Mexican medical costs might be a good reason to retire in Mexico. That's about $7000 a year.
Do Americans have higher medical costs due to bad habits? At least we do not smoke much by world standards. We are not bigger drinkers than the world average. We are not more sedentary. We simply have an extreme example of profits-first medicine that no other nation would tolerate.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.