...we begin with striking evidence of the inefficiency of the U.S. health care system. The following chart (from OurWorldInData.org) displays life expectancy at birth on the vertical axis against real health expenditure per capita on the horizontal axis. The point is that the U.S. line in red lies well below the cost-performance frontier established by a range of advanced economies (and some emerging economies, too). Put differently, the United States spends more per person but gets less for its money.
To measure the degree of inefficiency, we focus on the 2014 observations (the endpoints of the lines in the first chart) for a larger set of 43 high-income countries. These data are plotted below. The dashed line shows the simple logarithmic relationship between life expectancy and real per capita health spending for the 42 countries excluding the United States. The red dot shows the United States, which spends $9,402 per person to obtain life expectancy at birth of just under 79 years. Not only is this 40 percent more than the next highest country in the sample (that’s Luxembourg), it is nearly 4 times what other countries spend to obtain this same longevity!
We may have great technology but the system is inefficient. So why is it so hard for policy makers to see the inefficiencies and to fix them?
A major difficulty with health care and insurance in the United States is that consumers have very limited information. Prices for regular procedures and surgeries are not publicized and are difficult to obtain. Programs that allow for consumers to make more informed decisions by providing them with price and quality information before they have a procedure done, would be an appropriate solution for bringing prices down. Some of these programs already exist, and as they become easier to use they will likely gain popularity.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-healthcare-watch-20150420-story.html