Re:Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospit...
by californical on Wednesday September 07, 2022 @01:04AM
(#32746531)
Wow, I had to check your facts here, and I can’t believe it. The US federal healthcare spending is very close to the UK healthcare spending, but we cover WAY less for individuals.
The US federal govt spends >8% of GDP on healthcare, with the current system of all of our insurance and payments and everything that we have to pay in addition, totaling nearly 20% of GDP: https://www.crfb.org/papers/american-health-care-health-spen...
The UK spent 9.6% of GDP on healthcare in that same year (2017) for their publicly-funded full healthcare system: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
Re:Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospit...
by deburo on Thursday September 08, 2022 @12:29PM
(#32767922)
>but we cover WAY less for individuals.
That has to be related to the fact that American drugs are sold to a lesser price abroad than at home, right?
In Quebec, cancer treatment is free. Given that even late-stage cancer patients live much longer nowadays, and those treatments are probably expensive as heck, I wonder how we can afford it.
This isn't necessarily a great metric, because almost all countries have better outcomes and all countries have lower per capita cost, whether their systems are public, private, or mixed. The US spends more public funds on healthcare than countries with universal socialized health care systems. The fact that we're also personally bankrupted after spending the same tax proportion on healthcare is just a bonus.
It's not specifically private healthcare or insurance that's the problem, it's the specific corruption of the people who own the healthcare industry and their legislators.