EU Rota Analyzes Health Care Spending in Various Countries (Who Comes Out Best, and What about Results?)
EU Rota notes that, thanks to ignorant worldwide media, many around the world have the impression that many, if not most, Americans receive mediocre health care at best, and at worst get turned away from the emergency room regardless of how dire the need is if we forgot our checkbooks. Of course this isn’t so.
His third graph is the most interesting, where it shows that America spends more on health care by far (about $5,200 in 2002) than Canada, The UK, France, Germany, Norway, or Sweden (none of the others are over $3,300 in 2002).
We also manage not to have sinful waits for non-emergency visits and surgery (Canada), a level of cleanliness clearly superior to Britain (first sentence at link: “Many people are now frightened that they could pick up a dangerous infection if they go into hospital.”), and a system that is not scandalously indifferent when thousands of elderly throughout an entire nation are dying in the summer heat while the medical community all seems to be on vacation at the same time (France).
The biggest problem we in the US have is that where the government is involved, it sucks up much more money per person than the private sector does. Recall the $5,200 average above, and then refer back to this previous post that documents New York State’s Medicaid program as spending $11,000 per year per covered person (NOT per family–per person). Similar though not as extreme cost problems are present in most other states. Fixing (read: privatizing) Medicare and Medicaid would, over time, bring down the spending just noted (but not to the level of the other countries) without any decrease, and perhaps even an improvement, in the quality of care.
But the clincher in the media’s coverage of health care is frequent citation of Cuba as a mecca of free medical care for all of its citizens. During the first few days after Hurricane Katrina, Fidel Castro even offered to send some of his wonderful Cuban doctors to assist in the recovery effort. I dont’ believe the offer was accepted, which is probably just as well for Castro, as mass defections, which would have been more than a little likely, would have been very embarrassing. I for one would not have turned them down, as long as they promised to work in conditions more acceptable than those pictured here and here.
I’m not about to blame all the problems in NY’s Medicaid on fraud or govt waste yet… the problem is that certain medical problems pretty much get you put on govt health care. For example - dialysis or other kidney problems. Much of nursing home care is from the Medicaid system (Medicare doesn’t cover LTC, and LTC insurance has per day limits, and sometimes lifetime limits that don’t really cover that much, usually…for affordable premiums, you need to be buying the insurance decades before you’re likely to use the benefits. And we know how good the govt is in long-term savings.)
However, this being govt money, I’m appalled that they can’t track what this money is actually being spent on, and how much is gobbled up in fraud.
Comment by meep — October 12, 2005 @ 5:02 am
#1, you make good points about Medicaid being the provider of last resort for very expensive procedures and LTC. Even with that considered, $11,000 per year per covered person is absurd.
A legislative contact in Ohio told me that a lot of the problem has to do with marginal-value medical procedures and practitioners being included in Medicaid (chiropractic is one cited) and powerful lobbies from those groups that make sure they don’t get reined in.
Comment by TBlumer — October 13, 2005 @ 11:04 am