The NY Times is running a series of articles on our health care system and why it costs so much. They pretty much conclude that the health care industry has hijacked public benefit for corporate profit. Consider these numbers from a
recent article.
The US Average price for a colonoscopy is $1,185.
In many other developed countries, a basic colonoscopy costs just a few
hundred dollars and certainly well under $1,000. That chasm in price
helps explain why the United States is far and away the world leader in
medical spending, even though numerous studies have concluded that
Americans do not get better care.
Whether directly from their wallets or through insurance policies,
Americans pay more for almost every interaction with the medical system.
They are typically prescribed more expensive procedures and tests than
people in other countries, no matter if those nations operate a private
or national health system. A list of drug, scan and procedure prices
compiled by the International Federation of Health Plans, a global
network of health insurers, found that the United States came out the
most costly in all 21 categories — and often by a huge margin.
Americans pay, on average, about four times as much for a hip
replacement as patients in Switzerland or France and more than three
times as much for a
Caesarean section as those in New Zealand or Britain. The average price for Nasonex, a common nasal spray for
allergies, is $108 in the United States
compared with $21 in Spain.
The costs of hospital stays here are about triple those in other
developed countries, even though they last no longer, according to a
recent
report by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that studies health policy.
In
another article on the bizarre cost of IV solution (a plastic bag, filled with plain sterilized water with 2 teaspoons of salt), they found:
The average manufacturer’s price, according to government data, has fluctuated in recent years from 44 cents to $1.
Yet there is nothing either cheap or simple about its ultimate cost, as I
learned when I tried to trace the commercial path of IV bags from the
factory to the veins of more than 100 patients struck by a May 2012
outbreak of food poisoning in upstate New York.
Some of the patients’ bills would later include markups of 100 to 200
times the manufacturer’s price, not counting separate charges for “IV
administration.” And on other bills, a bundled charge for “IV therapy”
was almost 1,000 times the official cost of the solution.
It is no secret that medical care in the United States is overpriced.
But as the tale of the humble IV bag shows all too clearly, it is
secrecy that helps keep prices high: hidden in the underbrush of
transactions among multiple buyers and sellers, and in the hieroglyphics
of hospital bills.
No wonder we can't afford health care.
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