The $11,000 Lemon - (health care costs)

[AllegroRondo]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/2B847C9B51894B8D8625713F004978A1?OpenDocument

Americans pay the world's highest prices for prescription drugs, doctors, hospital stays and clinic visits -- an average last year of about $6,000 for every single person in the country. For businesses that offer health insurance to their workers -- and fewer and fewer are doing so -- the high cost of care translates into high-cost premiums: roughly $11,000 annually for each family covered. That's like buying a new car every other year.

But along with the world's highest prices, we get the world's finest care, right?

No. In fact, Americans get appropriate medical care just 55 percent of the time, according to the most comprehensive study of treatment quality to date. If we extend the analogy a bit, that's like paying for a new car every other year, but winding up with a lemon that spends half its time in the shop.

(cut)


Basically, we pay more for health care than any other nation, but get less for our money.

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Yep. We are being ripped off big time.

[JDPriestly]

2. Health industry executive salaries.

That's the big difference. I believe our doctors are also better paid -- but then, they pay much more in tuition to become doctors than anywhere in the world. Also, I suspect that it takes longer to become a doctor in the U.S. than in other countries -- and that means that doctors need to earn more once they become doctors -- to make up the lost wages during their preparation. Our doctors are the best trained and probably the best in the world. Also, American medicine treats conditions more aggressively than in some countries. Older people with heart conditions get much more intervention in the U.S. than in some other countries. On the other hand, prenatal care for the indigent or those without health insurance in the U.S. is just horrible. I've lived a lot of places. I'm very well informed about the differences in health care.

[Porcupine]

5. Our doctors are trained longer not better.

If number of years of schooling was somehow correlative to outcomes of illness US citizens should be the longest lived and have the healthiest senior population. The reverse is the actual case for any country that has a per capita GNP even half of ours.

We in fact do not live as long or as pain free as people in other countries. We also lag in almost all measures of wellness. Much of the training Physicians recieve has absolutely no impact on patient care and some of it is downright hazardous. In particular we insist on keeping apprentice physicians (interns) working long past the hours that would ground any pilot or truck driver.

Our "health care system" is actually 1 part science and 3 parts mumbo jumbo and superstition. We cannot even adequately prove that coronary artery disease deaths can be reduced by bypass surgery yet thousands of these surgeries happen every day. The whole thing is an expensive mess.

[acmejack]

3. Fifty percent of the cost is administrative!

That is the highest overhead in the world and it also came about with the advent of "for profit" medicine. HCA, anyone?

[salin]

6. But, but, but... the private sector is always so much more efficient

than anything in the public sector.... so the reaganites and bushites have told us for eons.

[Fovea]

4. We are not first world if you consider availability

Like my SIG line says---