The cost of healthcare is a well known issue in our overall economy. People like to have tests, procedures, etc. done but we rarely really understand the costs. There's no menu on the wall that explains everything to us like we see in a restaurant. There's no shelves or display cases in our doctor's offices or hospitals to window shop what MRI's, blood work or other tests to compare prices.
Unless you live in France, where they have all this stuff figured out. No mystery for the French.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has some nice articles up over the last few days taking a good look at healthcare costs. In the first, they ask why some procedures cost differently in different locations. In the other, they compare Medicare costs between Pittsburgh and Miami. Pittsburgh has the older population, but Miami spends twice as much as we do.
The problem is too large to ignore. We pay far more for health care in the United States than in any other country and if we really want to fix our national debt issues, healthcare costs and spending will have to be dealt with. Not just politicized.
Here it is boiled down to its simplest form:
That figure, 16% of GDP, reflects only a portion of Americans with health insurance. These other countries, cover everybody at a much lower cost. If you think that our higher expense is justified because we get the best results around, we don't.
I'll update the post through out the week with new articles as they're printed...
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