We do spend a good bit of money on new technologies, but our healthcare system is also a bureaucratic nightmare. Insurance companies are more inefficient than the government.
Ironically people surveyed in this article below who used Medicare rather than private insurance ranked their care as consistently better.
And I hate to break it to you, but not every "medical breakthrough" is as glamorous as it sounds. Many times a new drug is put on the market that is essentially no different from the drug that came before it. The patent just ran out and the company is trying to make an extra buck by marketing it as something new to a consumer who knows nothing and will believe anything his doctor tells him.
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1648740/review_of_us_healthcare_system_shows_waste_high_costs/index.html
Review Of US Healthcare System Shows Waste, High Costs
Posted on: Wednesday, 4 March 2009, 07:51 CST
The United States healthcare system is plagued with skyrocketing costs and widespread waste, according to a new report by the nonpartisan think tank Rand Corp.
While undoubtedly one of the world's most advanced and complicated healthcare systems, challenges have escalated as the population ages, said the report, which can be viewed at www.randcompare.org.
The survey found that while Americans are living longer, two-thirds are now overweight or obese, one in 10 have diabetes and roughly 25 percent of those aged 45 to 54 suffer from hypertension.
And while more than half of Americans are covered by insurance provided by their employers, the quality of coverage varies widely. Nearly 16 percent of Americans are without any insurance at all, the report said.
Ironically, U.S. spending on health care is growing faster than the economy as a whole, with data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services revealing that healthcare spending reached 2.1 trillion dollars in 2006, and was projected to reach 2.25 trillion dollars by 2007, a 6.7 percent annual increase.
"By 2017, about 20 cents of every dollar spent in the US economy will be spent on health care," Rand said in its review.
In 2006, the federal government was responsible for roughly one-third of U.S. healthcare spending, primarily through Medicaid and Medicare. Private insurance company payments accounted for another 34 percent, while out-of-pocket payments by patients accounted for 14 percent. The remainder came from state and local funds and other private funds.
Rand found that the average American spends roughly six percent of their after-tax income on health care. The poor and elderly pay an even larger share.
Lengthening life spans, the increase in obesity, and technological innovations that push back mortality but with higher costs are among the trends driving up costs, the review found.
The Congressional Budget Office found that technological advances alone were responsible for over half the increase in spending.
"Certain technological changes, for example some vaccines, may reduce spending. However, in general new technologies tend to increase the number of health services that an individual receives, thereby increasing costs," Rand said in its review.
Some see the U.S. healthcare system as wasteful when compared to systems in other nations, and the U.S. spends substantially more on administrative costs compared with single payer systems. Indeed, while administrative costs comprise 7 percent of total U.S. healthcare spending, the number is just 1.9 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Private insurance companies have even higher administrative costs, at 14 percent.
"Practitioners and hospitals, in their interactions with multiple payers, are encumbered by numerous billing requirements, a multitude of formulas and clinical care guidelines, and patients with different covered benefits," the think tank said.
Furthermore, some studies show that one-third or more of medical procedures performed in the United States were of questionable benefit, Rand said.
A 2008 study comparing health care systems in developed nations found that while patients in the U.S. reported waiting less time to get an appointment to see a specialist, they also reported more problems with the efficacy of the procedures and the costs.
However, U.S. Medicare patients consistently ranked their care better than did those insured by private companies, according to surveys funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
President Barack Obama has recently proposed spending $634 billion on healthcare reforms aimed at expanding coverage to some 45 million uninsured Americans.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
