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by littlestymaar
2305 days ago
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That's a big wall of text, with some nice ideas about how efficient markets are the solution to the problem, but you fail to realize that the US has a sub-par medical system (life expectancy is lagging quite far from most European countries) while being twice as costly as the OECD mean per capita. |
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You can't compare life expectancy without accounting for cultural or geographic differences. The US has a higher rate of motor vehicle fatalities (as a result of driving more), more suicides and drug overdoses etc. These bring down life expectancy because they disproportionately impact the young. The US also has a lower population density which worsens emergency response times.
But one of the biggest factors is that the US system is really terrible for people without insurance. The outcomes for US patients with health insurance are better than they are just about anywhere. Lack of insurance is an economic problem, solvable by instituting a UBI or similar so that the people who can't currently afford insurance become able to.
One of the reasons why the US system is more expensive was already described above -- paying market prices when other countries use price controls has the US subsidizing medical R&D for the rest of the world.
There are also several other reasons costs are high specifically in the US. For example, there aren't enough residency slots but residency is required by law, which limits the supply of doctors. The FDA requires extremely expensive clinical trials but doesn't pay for them, which makes it nearly impossible to bring a new medicine to market that isn't under patent. There is a major lack of price transparency which prevents patients paying out of pocket or with high deductible insurance from comparing prices for non-emergency procedures. These are regulatory failures, not market failures.