Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
By Ezra Klein,
View full graphicThere is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher.
That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America’s deficits would vanish. Workers would have much more money in their pockets. Our economy would grow more quickly, as our exports would be more competitive.
There are many possible explanations for why Americans pay so much more. It could be that we’re sicker. Or that we go to the doctor more frequently. But health researchers have largely discarded these theories. As Gerard Anderson, Uwe Reinhardt, Peter Hussey and Varduhi Petrosyan put it in the title of their influential 2003 study on international health-care costs, “it’s the prices, stupid.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/2011/08/25/gIQAVHztoR_print.html
Pet Therapy: How Animals And Humans Heal Each Other
The Diabetes Dilemma for Statin Users
By ERIC J. TOPOL
San Diego, Calif.
We’re overdosing on cholesterol-lowering statins, and the consequence could be a sharp increase in the incidence of Type 2 diabetes.
This past week, the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the side effects of these drugs and developed new labels for these medications that will now warn of the risk of diabetes andmemory loss. The announcement said the risk was “small” and should not materially affect the use of these medications. The data are somewhat ambiguous for memory loss. But the magnitude of the problem for diabetes becomes much more apparent with careful examination of the data from large clinical trials.
Coming Soon: The End of Health Insurers As We Know Them -- By Self-Inflicted Wounds
Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini caused quite a stir when he said at a Las Vegas conference a few days ago that the insurance industry as we know it is, for all practical purposes, a dinosaur on the verge of extinction.
Time to sing, "Ding dong the witch is dead"? Not quite, but the day when most Americans get their coverage from what we think of as an insurance company is close at hand. It won't be long before most of us get coverage through either a state or federal government-run plan or a local nonprofit company. The big investor-owned corporations like Aetna and the companies I used to work for, Cigna and Humana, know that the days of making a killing off of basic medical insurance policies are over. And the companies have no one to blame but themselves and a fatally flawed, uniquely American system of providing access to care.
Knotty Challenges in Health Care Costs
By GINA KOLATA
The numbers, the projections, make health economists shudder.
The average per capita cost of health care in the United States is over $8,000 annually, double the amount spent in most European countries. The Congressional Budget Office projects that unless costs are brought under control in the next decade, the nation will be spending all of its tax revenues on health care, Social Security, interest on the debt and defense — but mostly health care.
“If we solve our health care spending, practically all of our fiscal problems go away,” said Victor Fuchs, emeritus professor of economics and health research and policy at Stanford University. And if we don’t? “Then almost anything else we do will not solve our fiscal problems.”
Dr. Fuchs, who has been called the dean of American health care economists, has spent five decades studying the health care problem. In his view, what is needed is the sort of major change that comes once in a decade, perhaps, or even just once in a generation.
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