The packet's 36 pages are mostly graphs showing the average prices paid in different countries for different procedures, diagnostics and drugs. There is a thudding consistency to the pages: a series of crude bars, with the block representing the prices paid by American health-insurance plans looming over the others like a New York skyscraper that got lost in downtown Des Moines. [...]The graphs are rather stunning. Of course, they don't explain exactly why there should be such a huge discrepancy, although Ezra notes that in other countries the government regulates the allowable rates. So the obvious conclusion is our private insurers here are willing to bleed Americans to the max to maintain profit levels for both themselves and the providers.
There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. As Halvorson explained, and academics and consultancies have repeatedly confirmed, if you leave everything else the same -- the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need -- but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.
Hard to see how the difference is justified but on the other hand, I fear any cuts will fall on the backs of the doctors rather than their corporate managers and facilities. Knowing several doctors intimately, the one thing I can say, is they deserve the money they make. It's got to be the most stressful occupation in the world. It's not easy to have a job where every decision literally is life or death. And you have to live with the fact that sometimes, people die.
[More posts daily at The Detroit News]
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