News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Americans Are Going Bankrupt from Getting Sick. Parent comment

Re:Americans Are Going Bankrupt from Getting Sick by i_am_proteus on Saturday March 16, 2019 @03:16PM (#19409599)
Consider: - The US is much fatter, on average - Medicare's standards for reimbursement are often not based on cost effectivenes - The US government will pay around $150K/QALY vs. e.g. the UK's c. $40K/QALY.

More expensive healthcare per capita is what I'd expect given those attributes and "single payer is the only solution" does not seem to be logically linked to the problem and facts.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Americans Are Going Bankrupt from Getting Sick by tapland on Saturday March 16, 2019 @03:24PM (#19409660)
You are paying much more than anyone else[0]. I really doubt that's because of you being the 17th fattest country by BMI[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_mass...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Americans Are Going Bankrupt from Getting Sick by i_am_proteus on Saturday March 16, 2019 @05:07PM (#19410294)
Please note that the data you link does not address obesity and health costs simultaneously! Obesity is indeed a contributing factor, around 5% of total.[ξ] And from your references, the US has substantially more obeses and overweights per capita than the countries against which it is compared for health costs

[ξ]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449869/

[ Parent | on HN ]