Why Do We Pay So Much More For Health Care?
The Wash Post’s Ezra Klein interviewed the CEO of Kaiser Permanente and found massive differences when looking at health care costs in the US and other countries.
Gee, I wonder why we’re going bankrupt…
And those are just 3 graphs! Want to see the other 19? Click here to download the whole report (.pdf).
I’ve already asked the question, but I’ll ask it again: Why do we pay so much more for health care?
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You slow? Cause we have the best health care in the world!
A sound bite that feeds a thousand pocketbooks.
What the graphs don’t show: Quantity available. Waiting times and other rationings, such as availability of procedures and technology. Developmental costs for new drugs and technologies (which are also in part subsidies for other nations). Etc.
“Because we pay more for each bit” is not in itself an explanation, as Klein seems to believe. It simply begs the next question, that of “why do we pay more for each bit?”
And the answer to that is because we as a people have been willing to pay more, that our demand for the product is there. Klein alludes to that farther down but misses (or ignores) the obvious implications when he says “In other countries, governments set the rates that will be paid for different treatments and drugs…”
Yep. Which in turn affects development and subsequent availability through both active and passive rationing while imposing a de facto new-tech subsidization cost on American producers, a price they (we!) must pay if they don’t want foreigners to simply ignore their patent rights. This is especially acute in regards to the newer higher-tech aspects of modern medicine — such as statin drugs such as Lipitor and MRI’s and so on. Which were not developed in France.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Marc Parent, Justin Gardner and Mr. Meta, Tweets Tube. Tweets Tube said: Why Do We Pay So Much More For Health Care? http://bit.ly/3UAokL [...]
tully,
But those other countries have private insurance too to fill in the gaps. Those costs are factored into these numbers. How do you explain that?
So the chosen get more money ! Why Madoff, been the Chairman of the NYSE with a salary big enough to pay 10 lives without working, stole money from the USA’s middle class ? So the chosen get more money ! Why is Benji at the FED busily debasing the ‘greenback’ printing money ? So the chosen get more money ! Why the Israelis are squatting illegally in Jerusalem ? So the chosen get more money ! Why do we have troops in Afghanistan to impose a cheat if the Afghans does not want ‘democracy’ ? So the chosen get more money ! Why do we have a climate debacle ? So the chosen get more money ! Why do we have miniature pseudo countries sprinkled around the world acting as financial heavens ? So the chosen get more money ! why we did have a French Revolution ? So the chosen get more money ! Why Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Churchill Et Al made the Soviet revolution ? So the chosen get more money ! Why are we rescuing financial thieves ? So the chosen get more money ! Then I’ll ask you: why do we have the mass media that we have ? …
Excuse me, but what am I supposed to be explaining, Justin? That reality fails to match up with the Sparkly Unicorn Dreams of wannab magic-wand-waving “comprehensive” reformers? Is there some part of “government rationing both covert and overt from price controls makes things less available and often of lower quality” that you didn’t understand? Is there some part of “we as a nation subsidize the hell out of new tech and new drugs for other countries” that didn’t make sense to you?
Yep, we pay more. No argument there. We do indeed, and that impacts us more and more as a society the more and more the process continues.
But the real question, as I said, is WHY do we pay more? No one forces us to pay more. The kommissars will not come to your home and make you overpay for Lipitor at the point of a gun. (Oh, wait, under PelosiCare they will…but they promise to try and rig the price of Lipitor for you as well!) No one need purchase any medical care if they don’t wish to.
We pay more because as a society we are willing to pay more for more immediate availability and higher quality and more immediate access to new tech. We pay more because we are a wealthy society, and medical care comes out of disposable income immediately after food and shelter, is inherently an inelastic-demand good, and thus consumes a larger proportion of any new marginal income the wealthier we get as a society (or as individuals)*. We pay more because we subsidize the entire rest of the world when it comes to new-tech development, and new tech costs money.
We also pay more for our love of regulatory burden, our propensity to sue over anything and everything, our absolute idiocy in graduating doctors from medical school hundreds of thousands in debt, not graduating nearly enough doctors in primary care specialties, and so on.
But the bottom line is fairly simple. There is no magic bullet. With each and every element of so-called “reform” proposed the questions to apply are: Will it actually lower cost, either specifically or systemically? Will it do so without impairing or lowering quality, quantity available, or access?
If the REALISTIC answer (not the Sparkly Unicorn Dream answer) to EITHER of those questions is NO to ANY of those questions, it’s not really a meaningful reform at all. At best, it’s a trade-off between access, quantity, and/or quality.
[*--This part is true of ALL developed nations where there is any hint of consumur price pressure, whether via markets or through the democratic process. Even ones with socialized medicine. It is just more obvious the more open and direct the market mechanisms are. It is inevitable and to a certain extent unstoppable. Ask the NHS or the French or the Canadians if you don't believe that. Among OECD countries we are actually BELOW average in sustained health care cost growth. Did you now that? It's somewhat obscured by the fact that we're starting from a higher baseline, having led the historical charge in improvements and having absorbed those de facto subsidies for other nations into same.]