I never understood this because other countries have free healthcare and we don’t! We get sick and it’s expensive to even pay for anything!
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1) Healthcare is incredibly decentralized in the US with hundreds of different payers and dozens of different models. There’s a lot of inefficiency overall due to administrative redundancy. This accounts for around around a quarter to a third of all healthcare spending. A single payer would probably halve that.
[https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/briefs/role-administrative-waste-excess-us-health-spending](https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/briefs/role-administrative-waste-excess-us-health-spending)
2) US does not have as strong of an emphasis on preventative medicine. One of the drawbacks of a very individualist society. People do what they want and don’t like being told what to do. Like losing weight and cutting back on vices. It doesn’t cost anything to tell a patient to cut back on alcohol. It costs a lot to do a liver transplant.
3) Most physicians work on a fee-for-service basis. Essentially the more services you provide, the more reimbursement/revenue you get. This incentivizes overconsumption of healthcare.
4) A large part of global healthcare spending on innovation is based in the US. We spend a lot more on experimental and novel therapies than other countries per capita.
5) Physicians in the US get paid a lot more in the US than nearly anywhere else. There’s a high barrier to entry to the profession with bottlenecks at med schools, licensing and residencies and the low supply equates to high compensation.
[https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/doctor-pay-by-country](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/doctor-pay-by-country)
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