IMHO it is useful to think of the US health care system - for every aspect of it, from doctors to insurance to drug companies to the use of medical devices, the number 1 priority is not providing health care, the number 1 priority is wealth creation, for all of the players involved. All decisions and incentives flow from that.
It would seem to me that in the rest of the world outside of the US, there is a more balanced set of priorities.
I don’t know if this applies to other scans, but many experts feel mammograms are counterproductive, increasing bad outcomes. False positives add to patient stress, and may lead to unnecessary surgery. Moreover, the high radiation associated with mammograms (and false-positive retesting) may itself be a major cause of breast cancer!
In an outcome-oriented system, the risks of mammograms are weighed against the benefits. In a profit-oriented system, an increase in expensive tests is for the better!
The US actually has the second highest average wage. If you go by median income, it’s the 6th highest, with 4 European countries having higher median income.
American doctors make more money than European counterparts, but that’s partly offset by the fact that the American medical schools are much more expensive, and therefore American doctors generally start out with large debts.
The eventual result would be that the government would have a greater role in funding pharma research. Importantly, the focus would shift from “blockbuster” lifestyle drugs (Viagra, diet pills, etc.) to drugs that cure ailments. Consequently, pure profits would be reduced.
Interesting. I just bought a Samsung 3J (low end) smartphone for $138 and am paying $85 a month for unlimited text, unlimited minutes, and 2-Gb data, shared between two phones.
Would that be due to taxes, or a high markup? In some states here, liquor is sold by private retailers and in some by the state government. In the latter, the price is inevitably higher than the former.
Beer is considerably cheaper in Europe. Supposedly an Imperial pint (568 ml) costs about 3.50 pounds sterling in the UK. That’s around $4.25 for that pint. By comparison, a pint of the same beer would probably run* at least *$5 for a 16 oz (473 ml, or about 20% less) pint here in the US. Same story in continental Europe as well, except half-liters.
Well I have some experience with neuro MRI and it’s the same as you say for mammograms (apart from the radiation risk).
Many people will have tiny lesions, aneurysms, evidence of mini-strokes, or just “miscellaneous” stuff, particularly later in life, that are either benign or unlikely to cause any issue within the lifetime of the patient. But once you’ve seen it, there’s some pressure to do something.
As the number of hospitals with high-res MRI units increases, so “many people” might become “most people”. If that happens then the system as it is will struggle to cope.
Liquor prices are almost impossible to usefully compare as an indicator of general living costs across the world. My general (rough) rule is that the colder the climate the more expensive alcohol is. This is due to the problem of alcohol abuse being highly correlated with long cold dark winters. Scandinavian countries (again as a rough rule) tend to try to make the purchase of alcohol as difficult and as expensive as possible. Warmer climes and people really don’t care as much. The desire to blot out the dark and cold with a bottle of something seriously alcoholic diminishes as the amount of cold and dark you face over the winter diminishes.
Of course excise on alcohol is a favourite form of income for any government, so again, where a government feels it can get away with it, they will tend to tax alcohol as hard as they can.
True for the first part, £4 will get you a pleasant bottle in the UK.
In Austria I can get a bottle of very passable Prosecco for the equivalent of £2.50 or a very nice Chilean Sauvignon Blanc for £1.9. Go direct to the makers in France and they’ll fill up a Jerry can of rather nice wine for 1-2 Euro a litre.
Liquor (by which I assume you mean spirits) I don’t drink that much but I can get a 70cl bottle of very passable gin for £10, I don’t know how that compares to the US.
I know you are asking about the cost of non-medical things, but it’s actually quite easy to demonstrate why European healthcare is cheaper and more effective (for the population as a whole, at least). From a previous thread:
In other words, a huge portion of the disparity in costs is driven by the administrative costs that don’t exist in a single-payer system. The post (and numbers) are from a couple of years ago, but are still broadly accurate.
Other people have touched on this a bit but have not directly made the point that the question is fundamentally flawed, and that you’re comparing two things which are not directly comparable.
When you talk about the cost of things in Europe being more expensive, you’re talking about the cost per item. When people say “Americans pay 2.5 times more per capita for healthcare compared to Europe” (or whatever the number is), they’re not talking about the cost per item; they’re talking about overall spending per capita, which includes utilization.
It’s as if you’re comparing the cost of beer in the US versus the cost in Germany. Comparing the price per liter of beer is one type of comparison, and comparing “total spending on beer” is a completely different one, the second being also dependent on how much beer is consumed.
That said, it’s very possible that the cost per service of health care in Europe is also lower than in the US, beyond the differences in utilization. But it’s not the same ratio as when people are discussing what people pay per capita for health care.
How do you define less expensive? The price of a beer in Oslo is insane compared to Prague, but Oslo salaries are much higher. Your perception of everything in Europe being more expensive is likely dominated by sources prone to use Europe as an example of the horrors of some policy or other, by for instance picking countries with high gas taxes to show how awful “Europe” is, but cost of living and standard of living varies a lot even in Western Europe. And neither “Europe is cheaper” or “Europe is more expensive” is true in general.
Well … Western Europe and the USA are today about as equivalent economically as to make no difference … but there’s some rough places still in Eastern Europe … that wasn’t the case back when I was growing up … Europeans were still hauling the rubble out of their destroyed cities …
Europe has done amazingly well these past 70 years … let’s hope these wars of annihilation are over now …
Also … a bit of a nitpick here about the European health care system … the richest states don’t provide for the poorest states … how much money does France or Germany provide to Eastern Ukraine? … how much money does New York or California provide for Northern Mississippi? … we don’t have an exclusive economic club here in the USA like they have in Europe …
It’s true that physicians in the US make more money than in Europe, but my guess based on my experience as a physician is that American physicians probably work much longer hours. Most of my colleagues typically work at least 8 hours a day and 10 to 12 hour workdays are not uncommon. 6 or 7 day work weeks are also not uncommon. The stereotypical doctor who works for 2-3 hours in the morning then goes to play golf and have a fancy dinner may be true for the plastic surgeon that works on Kim Kardashian, but not for your ordinary internal medicine or family medicine physicians or even general surgeons.
I live right by a state that just went from state liquor stores to private sales (Costco, Safeway, etc) and your statement is not true for that state. Prices went UP after it went from state liquor stores to private sales. They were sold a bill of goods backed by Costco and now they wish they could go back to the good ole days of efficient, cheap state run liquor stores. Plus, the selection at most places is dismal compared to the old state stores.
Much the same; our bottles are 750 ml, so a bit larger, but they cost between about $10 and $20 for decent, if not spectacular gin, so in the ballpark. For a point of comparison, Beefeater Gin is $17.75/750ml.
And a lot of it has to do with where the wine is produced, and how it’s consumed. In Europe, it’s both more local, and also more common. Wine is commonly consumed with meals, while in the US, it’s more often part of “drinking”, instead of an everyday beverage consumed with meals.
So as a result, it tends to be marked up a little bit, even on the domestic stuff. But there are decent, cheap alternatives - Trader Joe’s “Two Buck Chuck” is a good example.
Right. When comparing spending on whiskey, we must ask “Yes, but did the bigger spenders get drunker?” So, when the U.S.A. brags that it spends more on healthcare, we should ask “Yes, but are the people healthier?”
More than 40 countries, including Greece and Cuba, have lower infant mortality than the U.S. The U.S. has about triple the infant mortality of Singapore or Iceland. Among the 35 OECD countries, U.S. ranks better than only Slovakia, Chile, Mexico and Turkey. (I think Mexico and Turkey are also the only OECD countries with more diabetes than the U.S.)
See the same pattern at the other age extreme — more than 40 countries have longer life expectancies than the U.S. The average Japanese lives five years longer than the average American.
Other measures of health? You can find many (heart disease, mental disease) where the U.S. does poorly compared with the developed world, and some where it does about as well. But few, if any, where the U.S. scores ahead of enlightened democracies like Canada, Germany or France.
France and Germany are not part of the same country as The Ukraine. California and Mississippi are part of the same country.
Healthcare is down to individual countries.
I’m being a little facetious, of course, but in an apples-to-apples comparison for spirits, I’d guess that you’d pay 30% more in most of Europe for the same bottle sold in the US.
ETA: I also think beer is way cheaper. Not trying to pass of anecdote as data, by my favorite, Rochefort 10, sells for about $10 a bottle (330ml) if you can find it in the US. In Belgium, its probably like 2 euro now, something like that?
True. But that’s a separate discussion from the one raised in the OP of this thread.
Further, there are other factors beyond health care quality which significantly impact health, e.g. diet and other lifestyle factors, and it can be difficult to isolate one from the other.