| mrstickball said: But as you said, consumer expectations in the market play a huge part. My wife is pregnant, and we're learning about the wonderful hospital-industrial complex for babies in America. Simply put, our expectations are radically different in the US than Europe. In the US, 98% of all births are in the hospital vs. 30% or less in Europe....That plays a significant part in health care costs, as having a baby in the hospital vs. at home or a birthing center is incredibly cheaper ($4,000 for my child from start to finish vs. my brother's child at $10,000). If the US had the same expectations of care as Europeans, you'd likely save the industry approximately $50 billion/yr by that one procedure alone. We have a bunch of 50-billion-dollar-problems in US health care, and no trillion-dollar-problems like the government wants to mandate and expect to ratify the problem (aka Obamacare). |
From what I could find the percentage for births in hospital is similar to the US's in the UK (as well as Belgium, Australia, Japan)
Also the Netherlands seems to be a bit of an exception in the developed world with home births still at 30%
