lightningfunk said:
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Innovation or good colleges aren't why US healthcare is almost double the cost of other developed countries despite being largely mediocre in quality. That higher price tag reflects higher costs to the medical industry, not inflated margins. That means the bulk of that extra money isn't going directly back to the medical staff itself.
Pretty much all that additional cost has to do with how fucked up our system is.
The number one difference is the massive cost of administration. Rather than one easy system, billing in the US is a complete mess of different payers and go-betweens. It's a ridiculous swamp where the billing staff has to deal with all these different companies, each with different policies and provisions. Medical billing might actually be more complex than medical practice itself.
It's an absolutely terrible system but starting over means crossing the insurance lobby. Not many politicians are going to do when there is no professional gain.
Likewise, we pay far more for drugs than other countries, which is just idiotic. Again, doing something about that would require politicians going against the pharmaceutical industry.
The really important reason, though, the one that's actually killing people in the US, is the way our system influences people to put off healthcare.
This is the way one of my professors, a practicing surgeon, explained it: in some other countries, when Person A feels unwell, they visit the doctor. The doctor might find a lump, order a biopsy, then perform an excision. With post op visits and treatment, the total cost will be the equivalent of a few thousand dollars. In the United States, when Person B feels unwell, they ignore it. They "can't afford to be sick." They put it off until they can no longer work. When they finally do visit the doctor, or even the ER, that lump is no longer just a lump; it's metastasized to other parts of the body. A simple excision turns into an extended hospital stay, batteries of tests, drug treatments, radiation treatments, surgeries--nevermind that it still might not be enough to save the person's life, suddenly that "few thousand dollars" in the first scenario becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more. Drug costs alone for a cancer patient are about $10,000 a month. Why is all that meaningful (besides people dying)? Because you can almost count on a large portion of that not being covered by insurance. That means the medical industry eats a good chunk of medical fees, which in turn leads to the cost of healthcare rising to combat that deficit.
When I say our system is fucked, I mean it. It needs to be scrapped completely.
