Health care

I saw some statistics in the local free paper on healthcare. I shall reproduce them here.

It is about the percentage of GNP that is spend on healthcare:

US -14.6%
Switserland - 11.2%
Germany - 10.9%
Island - 9.9%
France - 9.7%
Canada - 9.6%
Greece - 9.5%

Now the interesting issue at hand here is that the US seems to be spending relatively most money on healthcare, but can't afford to have healthcare for all. There are several countries on the list who can have this but spend less.

So, what is wrong here? Is the US just spending more on less? Is a social wellfare system of healthcare cheaper than a capitalist one? Is the healthcare overall better in the US? Some 4% better than in Switserland? Is money going to places where it shouldn't go?

Anyone have any ideas on this matter?

Edit - these figures are for the year 2002

 

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And Americans say that Canada's free healthcare is a "unnessecary burden!", not only does Canada have one of the best healthcare systems in the world, it has a budget surplus to boast...meanwhile down in the "me" country, they can't even afford to spend $1.

 

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Spurious our cost of healthcare is pretty high. I don't know about the other countries on the list but why we come up short as a nation is because of the amount of money needed to run the industry.

Lawsuit abuse and high insurance rates (a reasonable figure for a family of 4 in tx non smokers mid 30's can run as high as 300-700 dollars amonth depending on type of coverage), have made health care a crisis in America. A lot of companies pull in companies with high deductables and no doctors visits or limited visits to save money leaving the family only partially protected and in need of supplementary insurance. A lot of families unable to afford private insurance opt out and when they do go end up with a 6 figure bill that they end up defaulting on. I bet if you think of those around you you will think of somebody like that. I can think of 5 right off the top of my head. that had that happen in the last few years. Those doctors and hospitals still get paid and that is where that money goes.

It is a tough answer to a complicated situation and I as a laymen don't feel I have a reasonable answer but I would say that at lot of our problems lay lies in the lawsuits

1) there is no malpractice cap that I am aware of
2) It is my understanding that about 1/2 of all medical malpractice suits apex 7 digits in payouts
3) the medical malpractice insurance the doctors must carry drives the price up

and the price/coverage of insurance (which needs to be profitable to the insurance company) that in the backdrop of a poor economy where families are earning less is being factored out of the budget.

A bigger demon looms on the horizion as Bush the war monger has put us in a permanent state of war thousands of soliders are coming back with need of medical assistance for the rest of their life which will be subsidized by our medical costs. That alone may eat-up the few precentage points we have on these other countries.

 

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I'm moving to Canada...

 

just looked up the sats in NZ, 7.5% GNP on healthcare in '99, beat that

 

What do the Canadians pay through social taxes for their medical coverage?

 

There’s a reason why most rich Canadians come the U.S. for medical treatment – you get what you pay for. The healthcare system in the U.S. is simply higher quality: you get to see doctors sooner, the wait for diagnostic procedures like MRI and PET scans is sometimes much shorter, the survival rate for dangerous surgical procedures like major organ transplants is better. Also, the doctors tend to be better, because doctor salaries are much higher in the U.S. than in Canada, which causes the best Canadian doctors (particularly surgeons) to move to the U.S.

All of which is only possible because everything costs a lot more. So, while I’d say there’s no question that healthcare in the U.S. is better, it doesn’t really do you any good if you’re too poor to pay for it.

 

What the US military is to American nationalism, Canadian healthcare is to Canadian nationalism...it ain't going away any time soon...thank goodness.

 

If you live in Canada, take a few minutes to calculate how much you pay for your 'free' healthcare in the form of taxes every year, then compare it to the cost of health insurance in the U.S. You might be surprised...

 

According to the figures it costs less.

 

According to the figures, it uses a lower percentage of the GNP. That doesn’t mean that the average person actually pays less out of their own pocket.

You’ll want to figure out how much you pay in taxes each year and what percentage of that goes to healthcare, then compare it to the cost of normal private health insurance in the U.S. (about $1,000-$2,000/year, if you don’t get any employer subsidies).

 

But Nasor...my taxes aren't increasing as fast as your insurance...

 

for starters think of all the paperwork that is nessary when you dont have a system of docs and nurses ect just on staff. Where each tiny piece of surgury is paid casually so to speak rather than having everyone trained paid and just doing what they are trained to do (operate) rather than spending there time justifying there jobs to the bean counters. Then you HAVE the bean counters whos jobs also need to be paid for. Its not the docs who cost the money its all the red tape

 

It actually does mean that on average.

 

i just took the time to calculate taxes and: US citizens pay 0.8% more taxes on $50,000 per year than new zealanders and with $1000 health insurance added to that it comes to: 3.1% more. proving that socialism rules

 

Maybe you should check your calculations again. According to http://www.ird.govt.nz/itaxsalaryandwage/incometaxrates.html and http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=133625,00.html, a person in NZ would pay $11,370 in taxes on $50,000, while a person in the U.S. would pay just $9,250. Of course, that's for two people who make 50,000 USD and 50,000 NZD, which aren't actually worth the same amount. Someone living in NZ who made 50,000 USD (about 72,000 NZD) in a year would end up paying 13,000 USD worth of taxes on it. Meaning if I made 50,000 USD, I could buy myself really over-the-top health insurance for $2,500 and still end up paying over a thousand dollars less than if I lived in NZ after totaling my taxes and healthcare costs.

But in any case, that doesn’t address what I asked. Figure out how much you pay in taxes, and what percentage of that goes toward healthcare – then compare it to the ~$1,000-$2,000 that private health insurance costs in the U.S.

The mere fact that people in the U.S. pay more in total taxes doesn’t have anything to do with how much healthcare costs. People in the U.S. pay slightly higher taxes overall because their government is buying lots of stuff unrelated to healthcare that the NZ government doesn’t care about.

 

No, it just means that in Canada a lower percentage of the GNP goes toward healthcare. The GNP is to total value of everything produced by a country’s citizens in a year, and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how much people have to individually pay for specific things.

For example, if Canada were to manufacture less goods in a given year it would cause that figure to go up, even though healthcare probably wouldn’t cost more for anyone. Similarly, that percent of Canada's GNP that goes toward healthcare could go down in Canada manufactures more goods, even though healthcare wouldn't be any cheaper.