US healthcare still stupidly expensive, with pathetic outcomes, study finds
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Of course the US isn't interested in reducing healthcare costs. Insurance companies and for-profit hospitals will lose billions of dollars if people start living healthier and longer lives.
Even universal health care would help immensely but again - lost profits for insurance companies means it'll never happen.
Even universal health care would help immensely but again - lost profits for insurance companies means it'll never happen.
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The fact that communism doesn't exist in the wild need not stop you dying in the fight against it...
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So if I've got this right Americans over pay thrice:
1. A lot of tax actually goes to healthcare, more than the average European
2. Health insurance then adds a lot more to the cost
3. When you do get sick, you have to pay yet again even with insurance
1. A lot of tax actually goes to healthcare, more than the average European
2. Health insurance then adds a lot more to the cost
3. When you do get sick, you have to pay yet again even with insurance
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Such a biased study! At no point has it assessed the outcomes of healthcare systems for the shareholders or the senior management teams, where I'm sure the US will be #1!
/s
/s
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Y’all, idk what’s so complex about our healthcare system.
We got the British NHS system for the Veterans, the Canadian Single Payer system for Old People, and the Swiss private insurance system for those employed, and ER 100k bills for everyone else.
it's perfectly logical and sane...
We got the British NHS system for the Veterans, the Canadian Single Payer system for Old People, and the Swiss private insurance system for those employed, and ER 100k bills for everyone else.
it's perfectly logical and sane...
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Well, and ultimately--healthcare is just expensive. Even the US military spends a mint on it with its own in-house medical staff and facilities and historical stance of mandatory fit-reps, and vaccines, a demographically younger pool of users, and so on. Even countries with single payer have tension when it comes to how to pay for their aging populations and care needs as age increases.
That being said...the for-profit model just makes it 10x worse. I think the CBO model for 10x years of single-payer was on the order of what the annual profit margin from insurance companies is....which, that profit margin isn't just premiums--that includes the premiums from the float they then speculate on to make money with our premiums as gambling funds.
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I don't limit this just to the healthcare corporations. Our reliance on tying healthcare to our employers means both sides of the transaction itself are incentivized to prioritize cost over effectiveness, and with few employers funding post-retirement coverage, the impact of deferring good health habits that can improve health in old age falls on Medicare.
As an additional turd in the punchbowl, people become reluctant to leave a crappy employer because they will lose their coverage. The upsides to shifting to universal coverage make it nonsensical there continues to be reluctance to do this.
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It turns out it is incredibly easy to convince people that "saving" $5,000 a year on your taxes is great so long as they self-fund their medical care....so long as you leave out that annual insurance premiums cost employers ~$12,000+ per employee per year (remember both employer and employee contribution come from the employer bank account), which is part of why American jobs are outsourced. Because why would you, as a company, socialize your employees healthcare on your bill when you can just NOT--and use foreign labor with socialized medical care paid by foreign taxpayers?
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fidodogbreath
Ars Centurion
Well, I suppose the freedom to die from a preventable disease is a form of American exceptionalism.
(edit: typo)
(edit: typo)
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Good to see accurate information. When I was in University studying this in Canada, 25 years ago, the U.S. was spending 2 1/2 times as much per patient with poorer outcomes.
Yet somehow the U.S. media was able to convince many Americans that Canada had an inferior healthcare system. I remember a young American arguing with me in 2017 that Canada's system was inferior and just as expensive. He was immune to facts.
Canadians live several years longer (I think around 4-5 years?) on average than Americans. The main causal difference is free, universal healthcare. It also means not going bankrupt from the cost of a serious illness.
Your health insurance companies' lobby are responsible for this situation in your country. They block every effort to expand your Medicare System.
Yet somehow the U.S. media was able to convince many Americans that Canada had an inferior healthcare system. I remember a young American arguing with me in 2017 that Canada's system was inferior and just as expensive. He was immune to facts.
Canadians live several years longer (I think around 4-5 years?) on average than Americans. The main causal difference is free, universal healthcare. It also means not going bankrupt from the cost of a serious illness.
Your health insurance companies' lobby are responsible for this situation in your country. They block every effort to expand your Medicare System.
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Nothing epitomizes the hollowness of US capitalism like our "healthcare" system. The entire insurance industry adds absolutely nothing to healthcare outcomes, existing only to parasitically ration care and siphon money form every entity in the chain of "care." Then tying insurance to wage-slavery is just nakedly exploitative.
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South Park Fax machine rattles furiously in background
View: https://youtu.be/VAfy26xs6e0?si=REaGxUeJhCRxArA9
View: https://youtu.be/VAfy26xs6e0?si=REaGxUeJhCRxArA9
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Correct.
And many people are so propagandized to believe it's the greatest, or that single-payer would be the "death of the USA" that it will be extremely difficult to change via the ballot box.
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That's about the size of it.
There's a shrinking number of us who actually pay nothing (at least out of pocket) for health care, but it's the same level of health care as the rest of the country gets. That would be our veterans. They get various levels of "free" health care, with some co-pays.
The down-side is you have to have a service-related disability to get it free for life, and a higher one to reap the greatest cost savings (like prescription co-pays, which considering the cost of medications without insurance, and even with, are lower than anyone else pays).
I've always been a proponent of universal health care as a civil right. But as long as we have psychopaths constantly being elected, we'll never get it.
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#1 is the key point in my view. Any politician who tells us that healthcare is a question of those mean old billionaires not paying their fair share, is just lying. They know better.
We should be able to match what Canada and the UK get for what we are already spending on Medicare and Medicaid and a few smaller programs. Anything else is a lie, a windmill to tilt at while they funnel more money towards private companies.
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The purpose of healthcare in the US is to funnel money to big corps and the rich people who own them. Providing quality care to people (unless you’re rich) isnt exactly a priority
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It isn't just exploitative. It has lots of secondary consequences:
- Employers are forced to socialize their employees medical needs. This is a burden to anyone who wants to start their own small business.
- That means they have to raise prices, that people complain about. This is an invisible tax on every good and service you buy.
- The above 2 things means that American workers are less economically competitive than foreign workers. American's annual health insurance premiums cost double the total annual compensation of a Vietnamese factory worker--for an entire year.
- It makes Americans afraid to lose their jobs, as you imply.
- Also a few dozen other knock on effects.
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For profit healthcare often under the guise of “non-profit care”, extracts a lot of wealth from its patients and that much and more from its clinicians in terms of time and effort.
American society is wholly unhealthy and will not change for any reason. I now seen multiple elderly patients with multiple comorbidities just getting a tune up until the next week when something else breaks down.
American healthcare is to do the most for the oldest among us without a discussion as to not only the costs but quality of life. Many families don’t even want to go discuss this with us and become quite angry.
American Seniors are costing Medicare and the entire economy a lot of money and with little quality of life to show for it.
No one wants to go into primary care and get paid peanuts when you owe $400,000 or more in loans. Those reimbursements are now decreasing annually which means that you have to see more patients to break even. Costs are outpacing inflation and reimbursements are decreasing inversely to inflation. You run the numbers and see if it’s worth going into primary care.
Lastly, American healthcare has discriminated against minorities especially blacks for many, many years and therefore their increased mortality comes from their fear:
American society is wholly unhealthy and will not change for any reason. I now seen multiple elderly patients with multiple comorbidities just getting a tune up until the next week when something else breaks down.
American healthcare is to do the most for the oldest among us without a discussion as to not only the costs but quality of life. Many families don’t even want to go discuss this with us and become quite angry.
American Seniors are costing Medicare and the entire economy a lot of money and with little quality of life to show for it.
No one wants to go into primary care and get paid peanuts when you owe $400,000 or more in loans. Those reimbursements are now decreasing annually which means that you have to see more patients to break even. Costs are outpacing inflation and reimbursements are decreasing inversely to inflation. You run the numbers and see if it’s worth going into primary care.
Lastly, American healthcare has discriminated against minorities especially blacks for many, many years and therefore their increased mortality comes from their fear:
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Working as designed. Like everything else in this shithole country the primary goal of (almost) every actor involved is rent-seeking extraction of wealth. Health care is just the facade in this particular case. And then you teach your dumbass, malicious, voters that this is the best possible system and anything else, like single payer, would 'ruin' it and they will keep happily voting against fixing anything or some crabs might escape the bucket.
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The US system is designed ideally inoptimally, especially paired with the labor market. Basically, our healthcare wants people to receive the most expensive treatment as late as possible. That's because employers don't want missed days or products, and will fire most workers for taking a day off to go to the doctor, and hospitals get paid the most for the expensive treatment. Insurers technically miss out because expensive treatment costs them more, but since insurance is tied to employer and people hop jobs these days, they just hope you're off their plan by the time it's a problem. They are literally betting on it.
All that means that Americans won't find out about health risks to take drugs or make life changes to correct them before they're debilitating and expensive. The negative consequences of this are:
Care costs more.
Outcomes are worse.
The population is less healthy and lives shorter.
Less healthy workers means workers are less productive, either from debilitating problems forcing days off or working poorly through pain.
It's lose/lose/lose/lose. It hurts the economy, it hurts the country as a whole, it hurts the individual. But it's the inevitable result of a bunch of disparate systems optimizing profit before all else.
Single payor could fix the vast majority of these, and we could pass national laws forcing employers to allow for sick leave. Collectively, this would encourage people to seek help early, fix problems when the solution is a diet change or some generic pills, allow workers to work more often and deeper into old age, and save money on expensive last minute treatments.
We won't do it though because America is special, in the short bus way. And I'm allowed to say that because I also rode the short bus.
All that means that Americans won't find out about health risks to take drugs or make life changes to correct them before they're debilitating and expensive. The negative consequences of this are:
Care costs more.
Outcomes are worse.
The population is less healthy and lives shorter.
Less healthy workers means workers are less productive, either from debilitating problems forcing days off or working poorly through pain.
It's lose/lose/lose/lose. It hurts the economy, it hurts the country as a whole, it hurts the individual. But it's the inevitable result of a bunch of disparate systems optimizing profit before all else.
Single payor could fix the vast majority of these, and we could pass national laws forcing employers to allow for sick leave. Collectively, this would encourage people to seek help early, fix problems when the solution is a diet change or some generic pills, allow workers to work more often and deeper into old age, and save money on expensive last minute treatments.
We won't do it though because America is special, in the short bus way. And I'm allowed to say that because I also rode the short bus.
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It's one of the few freedoms we have left, along with good ole fashioned racism/bigotry.
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5000 USD$ per year? If I was allowed to participate in United States of America elections, you'd have my vote for king.
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Other shocking news: water is wet, bears poop in the woods, and the Pope is Catholic.
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And I don't even get to use the "tax" part of the healthcare but my Boomer parents do.
But that isn't socialism. That's them "getting what's owed to them."
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The life expectancy bit? Lots of it most likely, especially the guns, areas of horrible poverty etc.
Really, to badly mess stuff up at a population level takes public health going wrong.
The enormous cost/person is quite another matter.
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my MiL has had a couple of mini-strokes recently and she's having some mild cognitive issues as a result. so the doctor referred her to a neurologist. they booked an appointment for her, in November.
USA!
she still thinks Democrats are evil, however.
USA!
she still thinks Democrats are evil, however.
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Healthcare industry should be the #1 example of private industry making something less efficient and more expensive compared to the government. There's a stupidly large number of people employed just doing cost codes and things that have no reason to exist beyond making it hard to navigate to extract more money. It's not like it's more timely either, a common criticism of universal health care in other countries. The soonest appointment to see a new PCP for my family is in 3 months.
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A LOT of taxes. About $29,400 in government spending per household in the US annually. This is about $14,000 more per household than peer nations spend.
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