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The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#21

Post by merpnderp »

triviatise wrote: post #14

life expectancy is a bad measure of healthcare effectiveness 1) infant mortality heavily impacts life expectancy. The us has a few subpopulations that have very high infant mortality regardless of socioeconomic status. 2) The us has a high teen murder rate 3) The US has very high levels of obesity 4) There is a tremendous genetic component to life expectancy. Some sub populations (asians) have very high life expectan…

You're absolutely right, this is the golden age of yellow journalism. Especially when the person who owns the magazine is about to run for president.

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#22

Post by cuboidGoat »

billsmithaustin wrote: post #13
Fernicia wrote: post #4

The methodology here is not good. All they're doing is comparing average health care cost vs life expectancy. They don't measure standard of care, accessibility of treatment, etc. This is especially important when looking at end-of-life care, which I speculate affects these both of these metrics the most. A hospice with private rooms, friendly staff, and social engagement will score lower than a hospital that keeps s…

If I were considering running for President in 2020, and I owned a large media company, I might publish articles like this, too. That aside, you can't tie all of life expectancy to health care. For example, diet, life style, genetics, and environment are all factors too.

The vast majority of the large scale increase in human lifespan you can put down to improvements in medical knowledge. People used to get their teeth knocked out and replaced with wooden ones as a wedding present, the idea being that the lucky couple would then have less risk of being killed by a tooth infection before the age of 40, as was common.

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#23

Post by maxxxxx »

frockington wrote: post #19
ahoy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACA was the middle ground and it's still bad.

I agree with you, I'm saying we should learn from the mistakes and iterate on the current instead of fighting for extremes that will never work or be passed

One thing the Republicans could have done was to iterate on Obamacare instead of trying to repeal it for 8 years and now that they are in power they show that they have no ideas and no interest in improving anything.

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#24

Post by ssambros »

maxxxxx wrote: post #20
ssambros wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicare currently pays less than what it costs to provide for a lot of services. And providers are either declining medicare alltogether or recouping the missing funds from the other patients. Where would all those other patients come from if medicare will be "for all"?

"Medicare currently pays less than what it costs to provide for a lot of services" Is that even true? Personally I have my doubts.

American Hospital Association: Underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid Fact Sheet, December 2017 Update [0]

FINDINGS

In the aggregate, both Medicare and Medicaid payments fell below costs in 2016:

- Combined underpayments were $68.8 billion in 2016. This includes a shortfall of $48.8 billion for Medicare and $20.0 billion for Medicaid.

-For Medicare, hospitals received payment of only 87 cents for every dollar spent by hospitals caring for Medicare patients in 2016.

- For Medicaid, hospitals received payment of only 88 cents for every dollar spent by hospitals caring for Medicaid patients in 2016.

- In 2016, 66 percent of hospitals received Medicare payments less than cost, while 61 percent of hospitals received Medicaid payments less than cost.

[0] https://www.aha.org/data-insights/2018-01-03-underpayment-me...

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#25

Post by terrywilcox »

triviatise wrote: post #14

life expectancy is a bad measure of healthcare effectiveness 1) infant mortality heavily impacts life expectancy. The us has a few subpopulations that have very high infant mortality regardless of socioeconomic status. 2) The us has a high teen murder rate 3) The US has very high levels of obesity 4) There is a tremendous genetic component to life expectancy. Some sub populations (asians) have very high life expectan…

So if you simply eliminate some of America's health care problems, America is like other nations?

That's convenient.

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#26

Post by maxxxxx »

claydavisss wrote: post #7
maxxxxx wrote: post #2

My favorite topic. And as always in the US there will be a lot of fingerpointing and no action....

Why? In the US, if you can pay, you get better care than anywhere in the world. The question is, can you pay?

The problems is that the US system is unnecessarily expensive and inefficient. That means that more people could afford it if it were cheaper. Right now the system is only good for very well off people. Others are in danger of either not being able to afford it or going bankrupt if they actually get sick.

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#28

Post by jasonlotito »

I always look at these types of reports, and it makes me laugh. It doesn't tell the whole story, and it doesn't tell the true story. We left Canada precisely because of its healthcare system and came to the US. Canada would have require substantially more out of pocket (10s of thousands) with a much longer wait (years), whereas in the US, the out-of-pocket was substantially less ($500) and substantially less time (-2 weeks) to receive assistance. And that was without using insurance from my job.

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#29

Post by maxxxxx »

ssambros wrote: post #24
maxxxxx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Medicare currently pays less than what it costs to provide for a lot of services" Is that even true? Personally I have my doubts.

American Hospital Association: Underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid Fact Sheet, December 2017 Update [0] FINDINGS In the aggregate, both Medicare and Medicaid payments fell below costs in 2016: - Combined underpayments were $68.8 billion in 2016. This includes a shortfall of $48.8 billion for Medicare and $20.0 billion for Medicaid. -For Medicare, hospitals received payment of only 87 cents for every dollar spent by…

After having dealt with billing from hospitals for services they never delivered or obscenely overpriced I am inclined not to trust them on statements about their actual cost. In my view the billing practices of most hospitals are very dishonest and intentionally confusing and opaque.

Re: The Economies With the Most and Least Efficient Health Care

#30

Post by nabla9 »

Fernicia wrote: post #4

The methodology here is not good. All they're doing is comparing average health care cost vs life expectancy. They don't measure standard of care, accessibility of treatment, etc. This is especially important when looking at end-of-life care, which I speculate affects these both of these metrics the most. A hospice with private rooms, friendly staff, and social engagement will score lower than a hospital that keeps s…

Bloomberg analysis gives one point of view.

OECD has published data where you can compares 5-year survival rates after major cancers, heart attack 30-day survival after hospitalization, stroke, ischemic stroke etc. They also keep track of infant mortality, maternal mortality etc. http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#

Data shows that Japan, South Korea, Israel and Nordics are have the best healthcare quality using these measures. US is often in top 10, or at least mid-tier. Beast cancer is treated very well in US.

But what is wrong with the US and infant mortality and perinatal mortality? How can the US be so low?

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