You would be on to something, but on a per Capita basis the US still spends more. So the reality is the US still spends more on healthcare than its developed counterparts
This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.
This is a useless metric, the US has more population than all of those countries combined and the healthcare costs in Europe are about half of what they are in the US. This article is reaching towards a conclusion, not really objectively coming to it, although it’s not surprising considering the source.
Even if you consider the population about the same, the healthcare costs in Europe are about half of what they are in the US, so the fact that they spend 30% more than 0.9T is basically them spending 30% per citizen on the proportional healthcare. The real benefit is also, y’know, not going bankrupt over healthcare fees…
The population of the US is more, although not by much. I pointed it out because the results from the article are different, claiming the population from those countries is more than that of the US (no, it isn’t) with very different numbers, which hints at the hand they are playing.
Study is also worthless because this is also assuming same for same engagement for services, but that is doubtful as most US citizens attempt to avoid Healthcare as if something isn’t covered, you may involuntarily bankrupt yourself. In the other countries listed, there is a lack of fear so a average citizen may be engaging with their healthcare system more often.
Being able to engage more freely with your doctor also helps keep the healthcare costs down because people can solve their health issues before they really become costly.
one reason the costs are lower in Europe is bc govts over there put strict limits on how much providers can charge for services and prescriptions, which is something the US refuses to do. Healthcare costs in the US are made up by pharma companies depending on how much they think they can get away with.
Sorry you find logic so difficult. It’s as simple as healthcare cost in US is higher, therefore costs more. Almost every comment except yours that replied to mine understood this really utterly simple fact to understand, but considering how you devolve the discussion into name calling, I don’t really believe you had any other intent than trolling.
The article is comparing 2022 costs/populations. Your link is estimated 2023 populations. The article is literally about healthcare costs. The article also states there is an additional 600 billion that is paid. 1.2T vs 1.8T + 600B = double the costs. Your second link seems to agree with this article.
This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.
dude didn’t even read his own comment. he legit went “yeah, well healthcare is cheaper in europe” as though that proved his point and not the point of the article.
Holy spamming troll. Any other comment you’d care to spam under, you insecure little snowflake? Just make your point and move on. Instead you are just replying under every other comment like the bad toxic shit you are.
I guess you could say that’s supposed to be the point they are trying to make: most of the insurance and hospice in America is overpriced, exploitative, and aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.
Jesus. Yet another spin I hadn’t thought of. Of course a cancer diagnosis should result in abortion, almost by default. Fuck you gonna do? Die for an irradiated fetus?
I saw a commercial for healthcare.gov. It talked about how people only paid a few bucks for healthcare. It was all after government assistance.
The fact that you need heavy government assistance to get healthcare shows how much of a failure things are here.
Also in Mexico they have legal price limits on drugs. They’re printed on the box so you know if you’re getting a deal or paying the max. Also can see a doctor for like 40 pesos (about 2 to 3 USD). It’s much cheaper than my post insurance copay. I understand it’s a different market, but they have better general healthcare than the US.
Also as a side note, most drugs don’t need a prescription. You can tell the pharmacist what hurts and they can tell you what should help (or when to see a Dr). If I want to see my Dr, I’m on hold for 20 minutes then get an appointment in 2 weeks. Once again: viva Mexico!
In the US, when I want to see my doctor I drive 15 minutes to get there and tell them I need to be seen for whatever and then I wait 15 minutes and then talk to the doctor. If they say I need to talk to a specialist, that may take 1-2 weeks after making an appointment though. It’s not cheaper, but at least I can get care when I need it.
Of course, not everyone can afford healthcare in our country. That’s the biggest problem. But it’s generally fast and competent.
Most people cannot see their primary care physician just by driving up and being like, hey, I need to be seen for x issue. You pretty much have to make an appointment unless you go to a minute clinic or something. And that’s with insurance. Your experience is very much an outlier.
No kidding. There’s at least a month long wait to see any of my doctors. Same with my dentist unless it’s urgent. Usually it’s closer to two months.
If I need immediate attention, I have to go to an urgent care clinic or emergency room.
The nice thing is that in the year 2023, all of my doctors are reachable via the hospital system’s app and they respond to questions relatively quickly. So there’s no need to schedule a 15 minute appointment that ends up taking hours just to ask a simple question or two or to get a referral.
Where I am in the US, dentist schedules 6 months out, doctor likes you to schedule annual exams a year out and non urgent a couple of weeks at a minimum but there are some urgent care appointments available each day (or most days). Dermatologist and GYN a couple months wait for routine care. But there are lots of independent urgent care standalone clinics, including for orthopedic stuff, so for broken bones I did not have to go to the emergency room and incur that cost.
It’s uneven I would say. Definitely not worth what we are paying in taxes, insurance premiums and payments to providers, though.
Man this is less and less the experience I’m seeing. Months to see my primary. Urgent care I can get in same day, but I work at hospital that saves slots for their employees
So about the same waiting times as developed nations with a healthcare system, but with 10 000 times the cost.
I pay like 5€ in Belgium to go see a doctor, the rest is paid by my insurance. I can walk into a hospital right now and get service. As long as the issue warrants urgency of course. And a call to my house doctor can be met with a half hour wait time if it is less urgent.
I work with companies in the health care space globally. The percentage of their profits that come from the US business versus others is just astonishing.
When you do a half assed public insurance option, you get a shitty result - terrible care, at quadruple the price. We need true single payer and more importantly, single system costs negotiator.
Invariably the law. I doubt they want that to be true, but going to prison in America is essentially a sentence to torture and death. There's no practical penalty for being forced to break the oath.
I feel vindicated. Not 15 days ago I complained about paying more in taxes AND health insurance. And I’ve been saying it for over a decade. Fuck private healthcare, it serves no purpose for the people.
Yep, this is why I argue with people who say, we should raise taxes to fund it…no fuck that, we can afford it now already without having to raise taxes even a penny.
I have to say, being on Medicaid through college showed just how true this is. Being able to put my health first, rather than worry about if I could afford a doctor visit (or an ER visit), was great. The peace of mind of knowing that I would pay $0 for ANYTHING medical lead to me putting my health first.
The one potential charge you could get was for going to the ER for something deemed a “non-emergency.” Even then I didn’t worry about whether I could go to the ER after whiffing it off my longboard and smacking my head into the pavement because… well, the non-emergency charge was $8.
Imagine not having to choose between taking your kid to the doctor for $300 and a sick note for sniffles or letting him tough it out and get marked truant.
This may not be a popular question, but: Would Americans be willing to pay less?
No really. This would mean a lot of good jobs being cut. Yes, they are jobs that provide no benefit to the public (rather the opposite), but thinking about the big picture isn’t very American. Americans like to side with the little guy.
It gets worse. It would mean a huge pay cut for doctors. They are way overpaid compared to doctors anywhere else. Would Americans side with themselves the people the government or those nice family doctors?
First of all what? Typically the highest paid members of hospital staff of “Administrators” who have completely shifted health care into a for-profit business. If the government regulated them out of their jobs and there were price caps set in place instead of wasting hundreds of hours decoding billing and fighting insurance companies doctors would very likely make more. They would also be more likely to actually try to help you versus hit unrealistic patient exam quotas to try and extract as much money from insurance to benefit the administration staff. Hell new doctors in medical school are pretty much unpaid and forced to work hours that somehow circumvent labor laws. The whole medical industry needs to be overhauled. Getting rid of middle management would free up capital that could be properly reinvested into the hospital for better equipment, wages etc.
I expect that’s politically the way to go; not that I know anything about that. You get rid of a few inefficiencies and pay off other stakeholders with most of the gains.
The fact remains, if you want to lower health care costs to levels comparable to other countries, you have to lower all the costs to comparable levels, including doctor’s pay.
I don’t think you understand just how much bloated administrative costs and bureaucracy account for the U.S.‘s healthcare spending. It’s absolutely NOT doctors’ salaries accounting for the literally billions we are spending and no doctor’s shouldn’t be paid less to do the same job. Remove the middle men and ghoulish profiteering from healthcare.
The US can pay doctors as much as it wants. If Americans think that doctors deserve more than they get in other countries, that’s not for me to judge. Mind, that it does imply that the US is more unequal than other countries, because Americans want it to be.
True, merely lowering the administrative overhead will also go some ways to lower costs. But here, too, I wonder if Americans are really willing to do that. Sure, everyone wants to get rid of the useless middle men, but that’s not anyone’s job description.
Education costs in the US are also astronomically higher than other countries, which when you’re indebted 250-500k as soon as you graduate medical school, you are going to command a higher wage to make payments. The Education system in the US suffers from the same “we should run this like a business” greed that the medical industry does and should absolutely be reformed. Cause freedom isn’t free but it can be financed 🙄
Are you calling for profit insurance the little guy? I don’t know why people think doctors would be the ones taking the hit and not the for profit corporations.
No. I am asking if Americans would actually be willing to see cuts happen.
To answer your implied question: Because corporations don’t consume. They don’t go on holidays, live in mansions, … There is nothing there which can take the hit.
Employees receive pay. What you describe is called “fringe benefits”. It’s not unusual.
If you want to know something about these things, health care statistics, executive pay, or whatever, just ask. I am patient with you, because it is obvious that you are a minor. However, if you want to know more, then I expect you to keep the childishness out of “my reality”. Ok?
BUT, small businesses would benefit, and entrepreneurs, if they didn’t have to worry about health insurance. Doctors offices costs would come down without a lot of complicated billing stuff to do. Billing specialists would lose their jobs. Of my circle of people - husband would lose his job unless it was a Germany style system, and two other people I know.
If you want some sort of employment program, the medical system here is a shit way to go about it. Why not pay people to do something with a good impact on the land or the people?
And again - universal, tax-paid coverage would favor small business, it’s easier to take a risk when it doesn’t mean you might go bankrupt from a medical issue.
small businesses would benefit, and entrepreneurs,
Quite possible. Rates of self-employment are higher in France and Germany (2022 OECD stats). I’m not sure if that figure should be taken at face value, though.
unless it was a Germany style system
You mean a system with mandatory insurance? Administrative costs are substantially higher in US health care. Anything to bring quality and costs more in line with peer countries would mean a substantial hit, regardless of the system adopted.
Why not pay people to do something with a good impact on the land or the people?
Good question. Just a cursory glance into the statistics will tell anyone that the US system is dysfunctional. It’s been that way for decades or longer. I don’t even know when it became obvious that it wasn’t doing as well as its peers. And yet, there hasn’t been a lot of effort to improve it (Kudos to Obama, though). Maybe Americans just don’t want to do what it takes. Maybe they just want a better outcome, without all the small, necessary steps to get there.
On Unless it was a Germany style system (sorry I don’t know how to do the inline quotes yet)
I mean that Germany uses highly regulated private insurance plans to get to universal coverage. That would probably be an easier sell here, than a one plan to rule them all NHS. Not saying it’s a better idea. I have argued for YEARS that single payer would be a good idea here because we already have Medicare, just expand it to everyone and audit the fuck out of the providers would be cheapest and most efficient.
As you americans tell it: That’s bullsh*t. I see you guys getting fucked everyday by corporate. It’s hard to believe this is the U.S that holds international power… it looks like a Circus on fire looking inside from the outside.
Yeah that’s pretty informative. I am not sure how well the recommendation for implementing it in the US would work though. It’s probably the best chance anyone in the US has for government funded healthcare, but it would mean people in the poorest states would get the worst healthcare. It would probably still be a step up and we could give solutions to that problem later.
Year over year my insurance at huge companies would get both worse and costlier. It was to the point that the insurance that was costing me $200/mo was literally just acting as a safeguard against something costing me $10,000- which would have financially ruined anybody at those jobs anyway
Just a quick mote: That is great and all, but the US has more people than a large part of Europe…combined The whole of the US has a population of around 337 million, the entirety of the EU is 461 million.
If you aren’t just trying to drop this as a random fact and are instead pushing for universal healthcare in the US, might I suggest looking at something more meaningful, such as cost per covered person.
Numbers also don’t scale linearly with covered persons due to inefficiencies, so that is something to think about as well. Quality of care is also a consideration. If i need an optional surgery here in the US I can typically get in within 2-6 weeks for the surgery. In some countries it can take months.
sigh the healthcare debate is so much more complex than people realize. I am pro universal healthcare, btw.
If we adopted universal healthcare tomorrow without consideration of the issues, the worldwide economy would take a massive hit. Insurers and private healthcare companies invest dollars worldwide in many different industries.
The six countries have a comparable total population to the US…
This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.
4 million more people covered for 2/3 the cost, and for what the US government is spending, it’s not even covering the 331 million people in the US.
Also it’s wildly dependent on what surgery. 1-2 years for some surgeries. Though the UK is significantly worse on that specific procedure, entirely on purpose.
Yeah I got into bottom surgery in 6 months because someone canceled and I was willing to stay in a hospital for a week in 2021.
And the UK NHS can provide similar speeds to the US. They just refuse to have enough clinics to accommodate the fact that trans people are about a third of a percent of the population and they’re unwilling to follow the modern best practices for transitioning. 2 year wait to begin an outdated and humiliating waiting period to start hormones isn’t something you do unless you’re intentionally underfunding it.
I support single payer knowing that I’m one of the groups that my country will choose to hurt in revenge. Because nobody should ever have to ask how they’re going to pay for chemo, even the people choosing to punish me for taking that problem from them.
So right now the PE ratio of the s & p 500 is 26 or so. That number on average historically around 15.5 if I remember correctly. Meaning it would take 15.5 year’s profits at current profit levels to pay for a stock you buy. Ie, if a share was worth ten dollars, it would take 15.5 years for the companies to all make enough profit to cover the price of ten dollars for all the shares.
So that’s average. We are now at 26 or more. So it now takes 26 years. Meaning, the stock market is TOO EXPENSIVE. This is a great thing for the boomers living off selling their shares. Just like with their overpriced homes, they are enjoying this situation.
Those of us working and BUYING shares are not. We can buy less percentage of a company for more money, and expect poorer returns on what we invest today. Same as with houses. We can buy less home for more money. Long term, means we will either have to work longer, or somehow live on less when we are unable to work anymore as we age.
So if you tell me we can perhaps get universal healthcare AND enjoy the benefit of stocks returning to reasonable levels enjoyed by previous generations, I’m now even more excited thinking about universal healthcare.
I get the sentiment, but it actually would be a positive thing. Most people in these industries are there because the jobs were available and paid well, even if those jobs only existed to produce more unjustifiable profits for the bloated system.
Remove the jobs, and those people might actually go on to play productive rather than parasitic roles in society.
By contributing to the building up of the productive forces. Fuck this stagnation bullshit, invest in infrastructure and urbanization, invest in clean energy, and automation. Cut out meaningless jobs.
As mentioned in the summary, the combined population of those countries is almost the same as the US. So per capita costs are in fact about 2/3 that of the US government’s spending.
Here’s the paragraph from the summary, which lists which countries. Maybe it doesn’t show up on your Lemmy client?
This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.
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