[wasfgwp]

> if you get colon cancer you get $30,000 for treatments

And… what if its not enough?

But yeah, extreme inefficiency and inflated costs due to poor regulation seems like the main issue in the US.

It’s not however obvious that less regulation would solve that, i.e. you have countries like Switzerland or the Netherlands with entirely privatised healthcare (more so than in the US) yet they have quite strict regulation and price controls and are doing just fine.

[expedition32]

It's culture. In the Netherlands a trauma heli will come for a homeless person or even a drunk British tourist.

America can afford healthcare it simply chooses not to.

[johng]

It's a lot easier to cover a country the size of Norway with heli trauma than the United States. So let's not pretend that is even an Apples to Apples comparison.

Also, culture and health makes a big difference. Also, the number of people living off the government fully vs. taxpayers makes a difference.

[testing22321]

The US is vastly richer than Norway, and benefits from economies of scale.

You’re right it’s not apples to apples at all.

The us chooses not to because the ruling class are barbaric and would make less money.

[wasfgwp]

Well Norway was massively richer per capita than the US until quite recently and still currently is by a slight margin.

[testing22321]

While I appreciate the excuse making, the fact is the US is by far and away the richest country to have ever existed, and the average citizen has a much lower quality of life than those in much poorer countries.

It’s a disgrace. Anything else you say is a weak excuse.

[wasfgwp]

Are you not confusing per capita wealth/income with something else?

Russia is also technically 5x richer than Norway in that sense. Of course they have 25x more people..

[mike_hearn]

It's not really entirely privatized if there are price controls. And at least in Switzerland, healthcare price inflation is a big topic like everywhere.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/health-systems/expert-warns-swi...

https://www.swiss-medtech.ch/en/news/cost-control-initiative

But Swiss pharma price controls are not very populist. We basically use the communist approach of stealing prices from less regulated markets. The FOPH looks at international prices in "comparable markets" to help decide what the Swiss prices should be. Not sure which markets are comparable but surely the US is one. So if prices go up in less regulated markets, they go up here too.

There is still a lot of waste and healthcare costs too much. It is high quality but I am often impressed by how much low hanging fruit there is to save money apparently without harming the quality of care delivered.