Current Events > How is healthcare so much cheaper in countries other than the US?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like.... what are they doing?

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Price controls.

It's actually about healthcare instead of giving a few hundred old white people billions of dollars.

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Because US over charges.

It isn't. We pay more and we get more. We don't ration care using death panels and years-long waiting lists.
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Republicans think that healthcare is reserved for the rich like a Lamborghini or a luxury vacation.

Donald Trump thinks that 6 year olds from working class families who get cancer shouldn't get the treatment they need.

Everyone: "Healthcare is too expensive in America"

Also everyone: *not doing anything to change it*

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Manocheese posted...

It isn't. We pay more and we get more. We don't ration care using death panels and years-long waiting lists.

Citation needed

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Healthcare is a business to make money not to provide care.

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The best thing is that it's just going to get worse because nobody wants to be a doctor anymore. Instead of the money going to them for the ridiculous amount of work they have to do, it gets sucked out of the system to some fucking plutocrat. At the same time the demand for doctors gets bigger and bigger as the population ages. It's a perfect storm of late stage capitalism bullshit.

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Manocheese posted...

It isn't. We pay more and we get more. We don't ration care using death panels and years-long waiting lists.

Oh fuck off with this deluded bs propaganda.


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apocalyptic_4 posted...

Healthcare is a business to make money not to provide care.

"Treating patients as consumers" was the focus of a few online modules I had to do for work.

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Manocheese posted...

It isn't. We pay more and we get more. We don't ration care using death panels and years-long waiting lists.

Don't you have a moderate democratic nominee who just said that old people shouldn't be offered chemotherapy.

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Manocheese posted...

It isn't. We pay more and we get more. We don't ration care using death panels and years-long waiting lists.

I wish people like you would travel the world more so they could stop being so blindly nationalistic.

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Republicans legalized corruption allowing insurance companies to bribe politicians to not break up insurance's collusion.

1) a nationwide pool of patients affords more leverage in terms of negotiating over costs than each insurer's little fiefdom can
2) the costs are disproportionately borne by those with the most ability to pay them via progressive taxation, whereas in the US the costs fall hardest on the sick (who tend to have the least ability to afford them)
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hockeybub89 posted...

Also everyone: *not doing anything to change it*

Get rid of every third-party payer, apart from charities and maybe catastrophic insurance, and the prices will collapse immediately.

The root cause of all of this, is charging a dollar but being paid sixty cents. All that does is make the bill $1.67 next time.
Also you need an entire back staff just to get that sixty cents.

Insurance companies, mostly.

They are so weasely that providers have to inflate the bill several times so that by the time the insurance company is done weaseling, they actually get enough to keep their doors open.

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Antifar posted...

1) a nationwide pool of patients affords more leverage in terms of negotiating over costs than each insurer's little fiefdom can

While this is technically correct, it gets to be a bit of a mess when force of law is behind a nationwide pool.
There's no negotiating, only decree.

Liberals: it works in Denmark!! I know Denmark only has the population of New Jersey and doesnt have hundreds of thousands of undocumented, unvaccinated, and unemployed people illegally gaming the system!

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M_Live posted...

We have a like billion percent markup on the cost of everything for some reason

That reason is, third parties don't pay the full bill, thus it's initially bloated just to get back an amount closer to the actual cost.
Another reason, is that ERs are mandated to stabilize anyone who comes in, regardless of ability to pay or ever paying. That loss has to be made up elsewhere, and it only gets worse as ERs increasingly become a de facto primary care clinic somehow.

Before I had insurance in Japan I had to pay 100% for a physical that included a chest x-ray and bloodwork. It was about $50. The best part is when I looked surprised they said maybe we could delay payment until after I get insurance if that was too much. I almost started laughing.

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ssjevot posted...

Before I had insurance in Japan I had to pay 100% for a physical that included a chest x-ray and bloodwork. It was about $50. The best part is when I looked surprised they said maybe we could delay payment until after I get insurance if that was too much. I almost started laughing.

It's hearing things like that is why I asked this question

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kll-yYQwmuM

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Greed

But other countries need to get off their high horse. That greed also funds more medical breakthroughs than any other nation. You're an asshole to accept all their contributions and then tell them they're shit.

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Manocheese posted...

It isn't. We pay more and we get more. We don't ration care using death panels and years-long waiting lists.

Right, because treatment here in the good old USA never depends on what your insurance company has to say.

Jiek_Fafn posted...

Greed

But other countries need to get off their high horse. That greed also funds more medical breakthroughs than any other nation. You're an asshole to accept all their contributions and then tell them they're shit.

This is a massive piece of propaganda pushed by IP shills like drug companies. Most medical research is being done by universities with public grants, not drug companies.

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Manocheese posted...

It isn't. We pay more and we get more. We don't ration care using death panels and years-long waiting lists.

imagine watching fox news and thinking this is real

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YMIHere posted...

Right, because treatment here in the good old USA never depends on what your insurance company has to say.

Yep, my oncologist had to call and fight for me to even get my PT scan for staging approved even after they had the genetics on my lymphoma that showed it was a high grade B-cell (extremely agressive).

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The US foots their bill

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ssjevot posted...

Before I had insurance in Japan I had to pay 100% for a physical that included a chest x-ray and bloodwork. It was about $50. The best part is when I looked surprised they said maybe we could delay payment until after I get insurance if that was too much. I almost started laughing.

How much is $50 for an average Japanese citizen?

hockeybub89 posted...

Everyone: "Healthcare is too expensive in America"

Also everyone: *not doing anything to change it*

Lmao what

Old rich dudes have been in the way of changing it for decades

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https://tinyurl.com/sbnneyq
"U.S. insurers and providers spent more than $800 billion in 2017 on administration, or nearly $2,500 per person - more than four times the per-capita administrative costs in Canadas single-payer system, a new study finds."
That's part of it.

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ssjevot posted...

This is a massive piece of propaganda pushed by IP shills like drug companies. Most medical research is being done by universities with public grants, not drug companies.

Patents that come out of government funded research only account for iirc 1/3rd in the US. Big pharma can both be assholes for profiting at a ridiculous margin but also create results that benefit the world.

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The entire healthcare system in this country is very very deeply entrenched into a position of attempting to make as much profit as possible on both sides of the political spectrum. They have nothing to fear except for long shot political outsiders and, more recently, bernie sanders

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Health is a lottery. Some people have terrible luck - my GFAQs friend died of cancer aged 28 in the USA, and paying for his care was a constant worry. In the UK (where I live) everything would have been free, because everyone pays through taxation. Some people never get seriously sick, but we take the view that if you're that lucky, it's worth having the knowledge that your taxes help pay for those that have less luck.

So everyone benefits, and there are no insurance companies charging stupid premiums. Well, there are some, as you can choose to have private healthcare, but often, even people that opt to pay for it, find that serious health problems are either not covered, or are too costly for them, so they would just use the free NHS.

Also, drug costs can be kept low: generic drugs will be used rather than than brand names. We have to pay for prescriptions, but that cost is kept low and it's the same (9) whatever the medicine might be, with free stuff for some: OAPs, people with low incomes, etc.

Not saying the UK system is perfect, and the system is under huge pressure because of govt cuts and underfunding. But no-one is ever made bankrupt because of ill-health. Same in other European countries.


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Jiek_Fafn posted...

Patents that come out of government funded research only account for iirc 1/3rd in the US. Big pharma can both be assholes for profiting at a ridiculous margin but also create results that benefit the world.

The cast majority of medical research doesn't results in a patent. Look at funding sources of research on PubMed. The vast majority is publicly funded.

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1. Insurance (private or public) raises the cost of goods and services by introducing a third party to the transaction.
2. Goods and services that people consider indispensable are generally inelastic, meaning higher prices do not impact demand.

Health care would be an example of both, so you end up getting really high prices. Most countries address this issue (in very different ways!) but the farthest the US has gone is Medicaid and Medicare which only subsidize our expensive system without fixing the cost issue.

threetimes posted...

Health is a lottery. Some people have terrible luck - my GFAQs friend died of cancer aged 28 in the USA, and paying for his care was a constant worry. In the UK (where I live) everything would have been free, because everyone pays through taxation. Some people never get seriously sick, but we take the view that if you're that lucky, it's worth having the knowledge that your taxes help pay for those that have less luck.

So everyone benefits, and there are no insurance companies charging stupid premiums. Well, there are some, as you can choose to have private healthcare, but often, even people that opt to pay for it, find that serious health problems are either not covered, or are too costly for them, so they would just use the free NHS.

Also, drug costs can be kept low: generic drugs will be used rather than than brand names. We have to pay for prescriptions, but that cost is kept low and it's the same (9) whatever the medicine might be, with free stuff for some: OAPs, people with low incomes, etc.

Not saying the UK system is perfect, and the system is under huge pressure because of govt cuts and underfunding. But no-one is ever made bankrupt because of ill-health. Same in other European countries.

In Japan if you are on public insurance (tax payer sponsored) you still have to pay 30% of costs yourself, but it isn't a big deal because the costs are reasonable. A couple weeks in a hospital won't bankrupt you (a friend on public insurance did like 2 weeks here and only paid a few hundred dollars, and they allowed him to pay it off over time).

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Broseph_Stalin posted...

Insurance (private or public) raises the cost of goods and services by introducing a third party to the transaction.

90% of Japanese people have some kind of insurance. Costs are incredibly low with or without it. That's not a good explanation. The Japanese government negotiates prices, many other countries do a similar thing. This is far more relevant than whether or not insurance exists. In the US everyone is basically negotiating prices separately and it's a giant game of how can I got the most money possible.

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@ssjevot
ssjevot posted...

In Japan if you are on public insurance (tax payer sponsored) you still have to pay 30% of costs yourself, but it isn't a big deal because the costs are reasonable. A couple weeks in a hospital won't bankrupt you (a friend on public insurance did like 2 weeks here and only paid a few hundred dollars, and they allowed him to pay it off over time).

I don't mean to derail this discussion, but isn't it true that Japan looks down on people with disabilities and acts like they don't exist? I saw that happen with a Japanese professor before and it was...uncomfortable. Relative to this discussion, it made me wonder if there isn't a dark side to the Japanese healthcare system.

darkmaian23 posted...

@ssjevot

I don't mean to derail this discussion, but isn't it true that Japan looks down on people with disabilities and acts like they don't exist? I saw that happen with a Japanese professor before and it was...uncomfortable. Relative to this discussion, it made me wonder if there isn't a dark side to the Japanese healthcare system.

A professor at my university is extremely disabled (he has no legs). It is true many places in Japan are bad about disability accessibility and mentally disabled people are often sent off to centers and families may pretend they don't exist (though my ex-girlfriend's family had an adult with Down Syndrome that often was with them, so that obviously varies as well). However at the end of the day in Japan you have one of (if not the) lowest homeless rates in the world whereas the US dumps disabled people onto the streets and no one cares. So as much as I think Japan could still do a lot to make things better for the disabled, America is no example to follow.

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Caring for their citizens.

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ssjevot posted...

The vast majority of medical research doesn't results in a patent. Look at funding sources of research on PubMed. The vast majority is publicly funded.

I'm only easily finding numbers from 2016 and 2017 so things may have changed.

Of $160ish billion spent on medical r&d, $90ish billion is coming from other sources than the government for those years. Even if it's quite a bit less than that now, it's still a very sizable portion and more than most other countries spend. Point is that it's still pretty significant no matter what the exact numbers are.

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ssjevot posted...

90% of Japanese people have some kind of insurance. Costs are incredibly low with or without it.

I think you misunderstood what I said. Insurance has to raise the price of a good, as an insurance provider requires funding to exist. Even a public system that does not seek to profit still has administration cost. You are adding a third party to the typical buyer-seller transaction.

Obviously health care is cheaper in Japan than in the US, that's not what I'm saying.

Universal healthcare is more cost effective is the answer to the OP

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Jiek_Fafn posted...

I'm only easily finding numbers from 2016 and 2017 so things may have changed.

Of $160ish billion spent on medical r&d, $90ish billion is coming from other sources than the government for those years. Even if it's quite a bit less than that now, it's still a very sizable portion and more than most other countries spend. Point is that it's still pretty significant no matter what the exact numbers are.

Federal funding is likely down if anything. This chart breaks the rest of those sources down to show how much remains corporate. It's not the majority. I was on a University grant in the US (comes from tuition dollars). Now I'm funded by the Japanese government (but they provide a much higher percentage of funding than the US does). My point is merely that for-profit organizations are not providing the majority of research funding.

https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_main_image_-_1280w__no_aspect_/public/NIB_datacheck_DRUPAL.jpg?itok=3r8wPkvs

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ThyCorndog posted...

Universal healthcare is more cost effective is the answer to the OP

Yes, but we need stable, votable leaders who want it in order for it to be on the table and private insurance must coexist with UHC like in Japan for it to ever pass.
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cronyism and regulatory capture

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