Major countries among the developed nations have found healthcare solutions that cost
less than the American system of healthcare and produce longer life expectancies. Most spend half or less per capita than the US. All have longer life spans. Statistics from these countries appear below. The table below show the per capita healthcare expenditures and the life expectancy for selected countries.
United States 6,096 78.5
Canada 3,173 81.5
Germany 3,171 80.2
Australia 3,123 81.9
France 3,040 81.4
United Kingdom 2,560 80.2
Italy 2,414 81.9
Japan 2,293 83.9
Spain 2,099 81.3
Healthcare Expenditure source: United Nations Human Development Report, 2007
Life Expectancy source: CIA World Factbook 2010
Reuters reported (6/13/2010), “Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday. The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries — Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.”
According to World Press (6/20/2009), the US ranks 37th in healthcare quality and efficiency. According to a Harris Poll, Canadians are more satisfied with their healthcare than Americans. The Harris Poll (June 2009) of Canadians found that 91% believed their healthcare system was “superior” to the U.S. system. Another Harris Poll (July 2008)
revealed that only 45% of Americans believed they had “the best healthcare system in the world.” The Harris Poll found that 70% of French adults and 59% of British adults believed their countries’ healthcare systems were “the envy of the world.” Among the ten nations polled, the U.S. had the highest percentage of respondents who felt there was “so much wrong with the healthcare system, we need to completely rebuild it.”
Some evidence supports the statistics. A 2012 Novartis/McKinsey study revealed that the French population has a higher rate of lung disease than Americans due to higher smoking rates. Yet the French spend one-eighth as much on treating lung disease and have severity and fatality rates one-third of those in the US. Early detection is the key.
There are examples of cost-effective healthcare in this country. The Mayo Clinic is one of the lowest cost healthcare providers in the nation. They achieve low costs through extensive use of technology and demanding application of “best practices.” Unfortunately, many American healthcare providers have resisted technology and do not want to be forced to use “best practices.”
When Americans are polled on how satisfied they are with their health insurance,
people on Medicare are more satisfied with Medicare than people with private
healthcare insurance. The “Death Panel” concept argues that government bureaucrats decide what procedures are approved and what are denied. Currently, insurance company bureaucrats make this decision. The salaries and bonuses of insurance bureaucrats
are improved by denying procedures, since denial improves the insurance companies’ profitability. Government bureaucrats base decisions on medical information; profitability and bonuses do not enter their decision-making.
Clearly, other countries have found better solutions to healthcare. Recent polls show that 70% of French believe they have the best healthcare system in the world, while only 45% of Americans believe they have the best. In addition, 91% of Canadians believe they have a better healthcare system than the US.
In this country, the healthcare industry has vested interests in keeping healthcare costs high and well-funded lobbies supporting these vested interested. In 2012, the healthcare industry spend $3.3 billion on lobbying, four times as much as the defense industry. There were 2,374 registered healthcare lobbyists, 23 for every member of Congress.
The organization, Public Citizen, reported that the pharmaceutical industry and HMOs
spent $141 million and hired 952 individual lobbyists to push Congress to pass the Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003. The lobbying worked. The legislation passed and included a provision that requires Medicare to pay full retail price for prescriptions. The Veterans Administration has negotiated a 42% discount on drugs, but this is not
available to Medicare. As result, the Medicare Prescription Drug Act of 2003 costs more than Obamacare, the TARP and the Stimulus combined according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The biggest barriers to reducing healthcare costs in the U S are the lobbies, corporations and special interests in the healthcare industry. They fund the election of representatives in Congress who will support their positions. Consequently, any significant reduction in healthcare costs remains the impossible dream.
