Jon Walker: "It’s a Ripoff!" Or "Why America Spends So Much on Health Care"

[Hissyspit]

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/04/28/its-a-ripoff-or-why-america-spends-so-much-on-health-care/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CampaignSilo+%28Jane+Hamsher+Campaign+Silo%29

It’s a Ripoff! -or- Why America Spends So Much on Health Care

By: Jon Walker Thursday April 28, 2011 4:16 pm

As you can see in this helpful chart from the Kaiser Family Foundation, America pays much more for health care than any other first-world country.



There are a lot of false ideas or very minor explanations that are overstated to try to justify why we pay so much.

• Other countries are just evil nations that allow thousands to die in the street for lack of care. False
  
• Our costs are hidden by things like the tax exemptions so we need more consumer-driven smart shopping like an excise tax to eliminate low-deductible insurance and insurance exchanges. False–basically every cheaper country has lower co-pays, deductibles, out of pocket costs and are, in general, less consumer driven.

- snip -

What is the solution every other country has hit upon to lower their costs? Central price regulation.

Most of medicine doesn’t really work like a free market because it is either more like a monopoly or hostage situation–you can’t put a price on your urgent need to be saved from death. Even when it could work like a market, the huge imbalance of knowledge makes smart consumerism basically impossible. So, all sensible countries do the same thing when dealing essential and unavoidable monopolies, they regulate prices, as we do with utilities. In single-payer countries, this is obviously done as an inherent part of having only the one government insurer. In other countries like Japan, Germany, or Switzerland, they use all-payer. This is where the federal or local government works with the providers and insurers to establish a fair, uniform pricing system.

MORE

[mmonk]

1. I think we all need to go to Washington and burn our insurance cards.

Well I'm from the generation that used to burn draft cards.

:shrug:

[eridani]

2. The business model is that of a water market in the middle of the Sahara

Water for $10,000 a bottle. Other countries make that business model illegal.

[mmonk]

4. Yes, that is the key.

Ours is whatever the market will bare. Not cheap prices to get the most customers. We weed out customers through our for profit insurance model.

[midnight]

3. It's health care fraud....

[enid602]

5. health care

America pays so much for health care because:

a-our health insurance industry consists of hundreds and hundreds of very small insurance companies which are protected from interstate competition.
b- because doctors spend much of the year working to pay for their malpractice insurance.
c- neither Medicare nor Congress have the right to negotiate prices with Big Pharma. Every other industrialized country has established very rigid pricing guidelines.

[spooky3]

6. Everyone should read "The Healing of America" by T. R. Reid - or watch these videos:

http://fora.tv/2009/09/14/TR_Reid_The_Healing_of_America

Extremely interesting and informative comparison of the best and worst of some other countries' systems, along with our.

[slipslidingaway]

7. knr nt