I’m old enough to remember when any old full time job gave you free health insurance. Granted, it was the old 80/20 deal, and you had a couple hundred deductible. It didn’t cover maternity, but nearly every one could afford to just PAY for the birth of their children. Then some bright people came up with HMO’s. These were supposed to make care better and less expensive for us. Seems just the reverse has happened. Lots of employers don’t provide insurance at all, or if they do you have to pay for it yourself. Your HMO has a Primary Care doctor for you to go to whose job seems to be to keep you away from any specialists you may need to see. And especially to keep you out of hospitals. We have a big percentage of working folks uninsured. So what happened? Why has the cost of healthcare so outpaced everything else? Why has insurance become so expensive employers can’t provide it anymore? Is it that doctors and hospitals have priced themselves out of reach of nearly everyone? Or are the insurance companies raising the costs? What gives. Anyone?
Good question.
So far as I can see… Scientists keep inventing new treatments, drugs, technology, procedures. And these things work better and better, and keep you alive longer. But they’re more expensive.
I think you got it right when you said “the cost of healthcare … outpaced everything else”. Insurance goes up because the worst risks have extra treatments available to them - and everyone else has to subsidize them.
Medical science develops faster than the wealth-producing capacity of the economy. (Plus you have lawyers and so on taking a slice via professional indemnity coverage, etc.)
Where does this end?
Ah! Hillary Clinton, where are you now…
The US has a unique approach to health care that, frankly, doesn’t work if the idea is to take care of society’s needs cost-effectively.
It’s the most expensive system (14%+ of GNP) yet only covers 65-70% of the population (final figure has to be a guesstimate) – comparable capitalist-democracies typically spend 10-12% of GNP to cover 100% of their populations (don’t look at the UK for another 3-4 years as we’re behind the European average).
One could argue that the health care issue has, historically, been hijacked in the US by vested interests to be akin to political ideology: Socialism/Capitalism. That’s unfortunate and a disservice to the people.
It would seem that profit and comprehensive health care (for an entire society) are incompatible bed fellows – we’ve had many threads here before and, for example, I recall one physician saying that, in the US, because profit attaches to every aspect, one can anticipate 6 or 7 x-rays when 1 or 2 would suffice. That’s a simple example but allows one to appreciate that cost-effectiveness is not part of the dynamic.
The WHO site is huge so I just include a link to another site that sums up the well-known position:
Americans may think they have the most sophisticated health care in the world, but a recent ranking by the World Health Organization finds otherwise, according to American Medical News (8/2000).
The WHO survey ranked the U.S. 37th overall in the performance of its health-care system, right between Costa Rica and Slovenia. And here’s the kicker–the U.S. spends more on health care (nearly 14% of its gross national product) than any other of the 191 nations included in the WHO survey
http://www.rossiter.com/news/ShowItem.asp?ID=41
If you want to do a search, there are many threads in GD’s on this subject.
And to follow this to its logical conclusion by way of example: All new technology is expensive at the outset. Witness such consumer items as VCR’s, desktop computers, handheld calculators, etc. It is only through mass production that economies of scale and cost reductions are obtained. Medical advances move too quickly in an inherently limited market to obtain these advantages.
Um . . Beer you wanna try that again?
Medical advances cost money, just as technological advances do, but medicine cannot take advantage of economies of scale? Huh?
This seems fishy. The 65-70% figure seems like a figure for health insurance - the 14% is a figure for health care. Could you clarify this?
Also, it is unclear from your link what criteria were used in ranking the various countries.
On the whole, Hemlock & Uncle Beer have it right, IMO.
Ah, never mind. You’re just saying that madicine advances so fast that even “older” drugs and treatments have yet to drop appreciabley in price?
There’s also a lot more VCRs produced than MRI machines.
Great ghod in Burma, I can’t type today.
While the expense of newer treatments may account for some of this, I can’t see that this expense would account for ALL. For example, I take a prescription that six months ago cost me $63. My last refill was $133. It’s not a new drug, it’s a generic. The only explanation that doesn’t involve a ripoff, is that I’m subsidizing new drugs I don’t even take. And the new drugs are paid for amply by those that take 'em. Feels like a ripoff to me. Needless to say, my next purchase of this drug will be mail-order from Canada, where for some reason drugs are cheaper.
Seems to me that now that we have MANAGED CARE, it’s just another layer of profit making between us and the providers. We buy insurance because otherwise we can’t afford the health care, and now many of us can’t even afford the INSURANCE. New technologies or no, something smells rotten here.
This might surprise some people, but a persons employer is under no obligation to pay for their employees health care.
Also, the Government is under no obligation to pay for anyones health care.
Health care is not a right.
If people would start spending their own money on their own health care, then prices would plummet.
Because many people dont have to pay for their health care, and instead demand that others pay for it, thats a main reason for inflation in health care, since theres no incentive to shop around and get the best rates.
Also, Government is always demanding the insurance companies cover more and more types of “illness’.” This too, drives up the price of health care.
Your experiences are atypical here. It is true that the fastest rising component of healthcare costs is prescription drugs. But this increase is driven largely by great increases in utilization - the cost of each drug itself is not rising by that much, on average.
A mistake. Managed care companies get substantial discounts from health care providers (about 20-25%, generally). These savings are passed along to you (along with some administrative costs). If you paid out of pocket you would likely spend more even in an average year (subject to utilization - see Barking Spider’s excellent post above.)
Doesn’t the Constition say you have a RIGHT to life. I think one could make a fair arguement on the fact that for the same reason the goverment should protect you from serial killers they should protect you from diseases that are trying to kill you. I came up with this idea myself so it might be easy to poke holes in and kill, please do so.
This scenario is not in accord with current medical practice in the United States. It would be more realistic to postulate higher costs in the following situations: x-ray vs. no x-ray and MRI vs. x-ray. Tests not performed in other nations are often performed here, because 1) the standard of care demands it, or 2) the medicolegal climate demands it.**
A link to the AMN article would be useful, since I have no idea what is meant by “performance of its health-care system” - dollars spent per life saved? most patients seen per day by the fewest doctors? satisfaction of the customers? I am in grave doubt as to whether the quality of health care in either Costa Rica or Slovenia is comparable to that available in America, given the poverty and facilities present in those nations.
Comparison of life expectancy can also be hugely deceptive. When Sweden accepts as many immigrants as we do and develops as diverse a population, then we can seriously compare the average U.S. life expectancy to theirs.