auditor0007
Gold Member
Americans are feeling the pinch of rising health care costs more than any other nation in the world.
A huge reason why is simply that America lets providers set prices.
The Washington Post's Ezra Klein draws this conclusion from talking to Johns Hopkins' Gerard Anderson:
Other countries negotiate very aggressively with the providers and set rates that are much lower than we do, Anderson says. They do this in one of two ways. In countries such as Canada and Britain, prices are set by the government. In others, such as Germany and Japan, theyre set by providers and insurers sitting in a room and coming to an agreement, with the government stepping in to set prices if they fail.
In America, Medicare and Medicaid negotiate prices on behalf of their tens of millions of members and, not coincidentally, purchase care at a substantial markdown from the commercial average. But outside that, its a free-for-all. Providers largely charge what they can get away with, often offering different prices to different insurers, and an even higher price to the uninsured."
As we've reported, the average U.S. family of four dropped more than $8,000 on basic health care services in 2011, while record numbers of Americans have been filing for bankruptcy due to outstanding medical bills they can't afford to pay.
Check out Klein's chart below to see how America's medical costs stack up against other countries like France and India:
Read more: One Simple Reason Why Health Care Costs More In The US Than Anywhere Else - Business Insider
Here is why our healthcare industry is so messed up. We blame high prices on people being sick too much and needed excessive care due to bad health. We think that by reducing obesity and smoking, people would be healthier and require less care. Then we find out that if the medical field sees a drop in patients, providers will need to raise prices even more to keep their operations afloat, because without all the patients, they will go belly up. And we already have less doctors per capita then most other countries, and we actually have a need for more because so many people are in poor health due to their being overweight.