[bradleyjg]

> The reason the cost of healthcare is so high is because medicare pays roughly 15% of a bill, others are somewhere between 20-50% of a bill depending. That is to say if the doctor charges you $40,000 you pay your 10% co-pay of $4,000 and the insurance then only pays maybe another $8,000.

That help may explain extremly high nominal prices, but it doesn't explain the fact that the median price paid is also really high (The $12,000 in your example). Nor do cross subsides explain the high costs.

Both bottom up analysis looking at the amounts paid by various insurance companies for procedures and top down analysis of overall per capita health care spending reveal a system that is far, far more expensive than any other health care system in the world.

[dragonwriter]

> Both bottom up analysis looking at the amounts paid by various insurance companies for procedures and top down analysis of overall per capita health care spending reveal a system that is far, far more expensive than any other health care system in the world.

Its not so much a system as dozens of different systems with completely different premises and extraordinary complex interactions which have to deal with each other.

Which is why it is so expensive.