how did the US screw up health insurance so bad?
In: 4
It’s less screwed up than most want to believe. Because if it’s not screwed up, then it can’t be fixed.
Several different researchers have attempted to reconcile US Healthcare to European peers, to understand why our spending per capita is so damn high.
A few common threads emerge.
1 American Healthcare workers are very well paid (or less underpaid?). On average earning 20% or more than those in europe.
2 insurance companies are not as big of a cost sinkhole as people believe (some stuff could be consolidated, but most of the roles would still be needed under a govt system), but the incredibly complex billing and coding process consumes a ton of resources at the provider level.
3 defensive care, our legal system rewards caution, not efficiency. Charge $1000 for a CT, they’ll order one no matter what because they want to be sure they didn’t miss something.
There are others, pharmaceuticals, managed care,
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