Comment by buckle8017 8 hours ago
The simple reality is that advanced medical care is expensive.
Access to advanced medical care can either by gated by one person's wealth or by the average wealth of many people.
At the end of the day though, someone is paying and the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment.
> the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment.
So tell me, why is random blood work billed for over 400$? Just to analyze the sample?
Part of the problem is definitely inflated pricing and no real transparency.
Unless you need that rockstar surgeon for that super specialty treatment that only the US can offer, the US healthcare system is just overpriced, broken and a money grab
Basic blood test should be $5. 99% of the more advanced ones shouldn’t cost more than $50.
Most medical care does not need to be advanced. It needs to be effective, but it doesn’t need to be expensive. It needs to be expensive to generate a hefty profit, though, especially when you have a serious condition - you then become a forced buyer and the market does what the market does with forced buyers without special regulations.
Or more effective treatment and not paying for ineffective ones. And less regulation and gatekeeping of which there’s a lot in the US (like needing insane levels of doctor oversight for buying medications)
The actual reason is that you'll have people going to see the doctor because their cheek's itchy (they're lonely, or clueless).
> the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment.
This is absolutely incorrect in the American system. Insurance companies introduce massive amounts of overhead for little benefit. Every study comparing them to Medicare finds that Medicare is way more efficient.
In most of the world, private treatment is far cheaper than equivalent private treatments in the US. To the point where even to a high cost location like London, it can be cheaper to fly to London from the US to have things done at a high end private hospital.
Medicare+Medicaid in the US costs about the same person taxpayer as NHS costs per UK taxpayer. The NHS could be better, but we get universal care for a similar price than what leaves most Americans still needing private care to have any cover at all.
That strongly suggests that the US could at a minimum do far better at providing cost effective care - both public and private.