Why is healthcare so expensive in the United States compared to other developed countries?

Question

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!

In: Other

Answer 1

In one word: Greed.

Single-payer systems uses master pricing lists to set the price of a treatment or service across the entire system. So, the pharmaceutical company can’t easily say no; otherwise, it would end up missing out on the market. Couple that with other factors, such as scale, simplified administration and a focus on patient outcomes over profits, and you have a system that isn’t incentivised to push prices as there are regulatory bodies keeping watch.