US healthcare still stupidly expensive, with pathetic outcomes, study finds

beanjuiceII

US healthcare industry needs to drop more non-essential workers, and invest more in workers that produce value. the industry is so bloated no wonder its costs are high. Just to get my ears checked i had to be processed by 6 different people including phone systems doing precheck-ins. one person does the actual work!

bell-cot

That "stupidly expensive" system provides extremely nice campaign donations, executives bonuses, stock appreciation, dividend checks, and paychecks to a stupidly large number of insiders. Even when they're (say) just medical billing clerks, who'll spend their entire careers arguing with the Denial Departments at various insurance companies, without every seeing an actual patient.

isabelc

It's to be expected from a for-profit system.

Schiendelman

I want to agree with this, but these studies usually make a big mistake - they don't control out for the non healthcare reasons for low life expectancy. Americans drive cars and most live in unwalkable places. These impart significant risks that the healthcare system, no matter how good, wouldn't impact. Has anyone dug into this to identify whether they tried to account for built environment? Or food system?

toasty228

Yeah but have you considered how good it is for the US gdp!

7e

The system is bad but the average American is obese, out of shape, and pre-diabetic, an atrocious diets and very little exercise. That doesn’t explain everything, but it does strain the system, which has to treat a lot more disease than a similar system with a fit population.

amazingamazing

Until the obesity problem is solved nothing will change. You can spend an unlimited amount of money - if people are morbidly obese it's game over. Americans blame everyone but themselves. Americans who do not have high rates of obesity have similar mortality to western europe. Take Massachusetts who has one of the lowest rates of obesity- similar to Japan. Sadly this line of thinking makes people angry.

testing22321

It continues to baffle me that Americans put up with such an inferior and expensive system. There’s always talk of freedoms and being brave and being the best country in the world to live in, but very, very little effort of action to improve anything. The French riot in the streets if a single day of their extremely generous (by US standards) leave is taken away. Meanwhile Americand can’t get off the couch to protest, or are afraid of their own government if they do.

protocolture

I think generally Americans are happier dying. They want this differentiator between themselves and other countries. They genuinely enjoy the misery it brings to the poorer elements of their society. This is not accidental it appears to be designed that way. Investigating it is a waste of time and not going to change anything until Americans actually want change. (and not just "want" in terms of making facebook posts about wanting it)

airstrike

I find it remarkable that most comments either criticizing the US healthcare system or expressing bewilderment at how Americans seemingly accept this have already been downvoted into dead territory. It's hard not to see those downvotes as copium or cognitive dissonance given no arguments have been presented to the contrary.

LocalExt

And not just the US healthcare, but the US education also...

kgwxd

Did someone do something that made people think that was going to change any time soon?

cheschire

Zero mention of wait times in the US compared to other countries. Pretty sure that's the chief complaint in most countries that have free-ish healthcare.

rawgabbit

The US has half the number of medical school graduates compared to the average. Instead of creating a lunar base, maybe create more residencies to graduate doctors? Quote: “…has produced one of the lowest ratios of medical school graduates, 8.6 for every 100,000 people. This is far lower than the OECD average of nearly 15 graduates per 100,000 people.”

neves

The market can't solve healthcare. It must be public. Americans shouldn't need to kill healthcare CEOs.

goshx

The entire healthcare system seems to be built against the population. I've come to see healthcare providers like doctors, nurses, technicians, and the like, as a conniving, essential part of the scheme. They're incentivized to make you wait hours unnecessarily, rush every visit, and involve as many different people as possible in your care. And then, in the end, send ridiculous bills to both your insurance provider and to you at home. The person who spends the most time with you is usually the one trying to collect the payment. It's absurd. There is absolutely no reason for a doctor to make over $1000 for a 15 minute conversation. There is absolutely no reason for a medical equipment provider to bill more than the retail price of a piece of equipment, especially after insurance has already paid more than the full cost of the equipment on each installment. There is absolutely no reason for a family to receive a bill of almost one million dollars because their baby was premature and was in the NICU (see @thepasinins on instagram). There are too many layers in the system making a fortune off the public's back while adding little to no actual value.

cladopa

The main problem the US has is food. As a Spaniard myself, every time I go to the US it is really hard for me to eat well. Good quality food is extremely expensive and inconvenient (full of friction) compared to Japan or Europe. The solution are not better Hospitals to deal with your diabetes or cancer after all your food has sugars it should not have like corn syrup because sugar is cheap. You have so much additives in your food for preservation. Meat is full of Hormones. Antibiotics on your vegetables that destroy your microbiota. Genetically Modified to fill the fields with pesticides. Now Americans are obese as they process the growth hormones from their meat and their microbiota dies from the antibiotics they eat in their vegetables and their meat. Waiting until your children has autism or asthma or cancer is not the solution.

h4kunamata

USA population will never know peace. When basic exams cost them easily US$100k, you know the system is broken. Health system is a business model in the US, and people who are organ donor are literally being murdered to have their organs removed. Don't trust my owners, you won't need much to find that out.

b3nji

This doesn't ring true coming from the UK. I like in the US now and the healthcare is not comparable. The UK health care system is an absolute joke, it's a running joke among a lot of the population. It's not free for a start, the taxes the population have to pay are eye watering. You have to wait weeks, if not months for a specialist, hospital beds are few, there is no accountability for regular fuck ups (I've been on the bad end of a horrific one). The US system from what I have seen so far is a dream. It's cheaper and the service is top notch. For context I've moved from the Midlands in the UK to the Research Triangle in North Carolina.

tptacek

You know you're in trouble with all these kinds of analyses when they try to square up cost of care with life expectancy. The principal components in life expectancy difference between the US and the other OECDs are car accidents, homicides, and CVD. Obviously, accidents and homicides aren't a function of the health care system; they're a function of the atypical dependence the US has on cars and its wildly atypical availability of firearms. Though: it is worth noting that the OECD definition of "preventable deaths" includes vehicular accidents! But even the CVD statistics are misleading in a comparison like this. CVD outcomes are heavily regionalized in the US. The New England states have CVD outcomes comparable to western Europe. But go to Mississippi and Alabama and we look like a developing country. There's a lot of stuff going into that difference, but the key thing here is that the structural design of the health system is the same in both regions. There's a lot not to like about the US system of employer-paid health insurance. But these kinds of critiques are frustrating and a little unserious, and it annoys me that this article assumes its readers won't dig into the crosstabs and will just take the comparison on faith. That's disrespectful to readers.