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This morning I found this very good summary of this issue on USA Today.
Check out this article from USA TODAY:
Seven reasons why Americans pay more for health care than any other nation
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/12/15/why-americans-pay-more-for-health-care/76900978007/
One problem is that the people who can improve the health care system in America (like Congress) have no skin in the game. Example: Nancy Pelosi takes a fall, breaks her hip, and gets a hip replacement in 24 hours paid by the US taxpayer. They don’t care about us, most are shareholders in Big Pharma and insurance companies.
Members of Congress must use ACA like others. They do receive an employer contribution just like millions of Americans. Her fall on government business may be handled like any on the job accident.
Except for the evacuation on a US government jet. Probably one of the huge Airforce transports you constantly see pictures of government official stepping off of in foreign lands.
Are you saying she didn’t get special treatment?
Special treatment, special circumstances. What’s the problem?
“The US military had medevaced the former House speaker from Luxembourg to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, according to a defense official. The medical center is a major military hospital that for years has treated US troops injured in combat.” (CNN)
So she got the same treatment someone in the military would receive. If she had been a normal tourist in Luxembourg she would have been treated in a Luxembourg hospital, and I will bet you that the treatment would have been as good as that available in the US at a lower cost.
When I broke my wrist in Switzerland the cost for surgery to insert pins and a night in the hospital was the same as the cost of the ten minute out patient surgery to remove the pins in the US.
From the stories I have read about wait times for healthcare in Canada and The UK, I’ll take higher costs in exchange for having care sooner.
IIRC from my college economics course of half a century ago that is called ‘time utility’.
People wait in the US too.
Try making your comparisons to large hybrid public/private health care systems like Germany and France. Time has proven that a public system supported by optional private insurance delivers the most timely care with the best outcomes at costs sharply lower than the US model.
Under the most common measurements for the quality of a health care system — life expectancy, maternal mortality and infant mortality — the US is ghastly. We have the best hospitals, best doctors and nurses, best medical education and most fruitful research, and yet our infant mortality rate is by far the worst of any developed nation — and it’s actually rising.
What we’re doing isn’t working.
Mike wrote that:
”What we’re doing isn’t working.”
I can … uh … buy that 🙂
My experience probably isn’t typical as I have always been covered by excellent healthcare AND insurance.