Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

They were just expressing the notion that while the acute personal cost is zero the actual cost is still borne. They didn’t make the point in a very nuanced way but any system that divorces the cost from the person receiving the treatment hides information by suppressing the natural price discovery mechanism.

Anyway, I agree that insurance has a similar problem, at least if policies like “no pre-existing conditions” are followed. However if such policies are not in place then premiums would go up and thus the information propagation of the price mechanism is (all else equal) restored.

I don’t have time to get into it but speaking from the US perspective I really wish we had a real free market system with no government revelation or licensure laws whatsoever. What we have now is criticized by the ignorant as a “failure of unbridled capitalism” but it is of course anything but. It is absolutely absurd that I can’t decide that I don’t want insurance and equally that I’m not told what a procedure or drug or item will cost beforehand. I’ve been to the ER several times and you’re always treated like a bag of meat to poke and prod and I have to be very diligent about constantly getting them to tell me what they’re actually doing. (And don’t even get me started on the chargemaster system where they initially charge you 10x more than what they expect to recoup purely for leverage to negotiate with insurance)

This is the gist of American healthcare.

A good read from someone who had a medical crisis, from a series of medical errors, is "Our Malady" by Timothy Snyder. He took great notes in his personal diary when the whole ordeal occurred and was able to trace back the errors, unlike most people. He also nearly died. He is a renowned American historian who is a scholar of European history, and particularly of eastern European history.

Anyways, the third leading cause of death in the US is believed to be preventable medical errors (you can also google "3rd leading cause of death preventable medical errors" and find other sources which corroborate the findings of this peer-reviewed journal article): https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139

When it comes to longevity of the human lifespan, as in life expectancy, by country, the US is about to soon mirror Croatia (I am a dual US|EU [Croatian] citizen). You know, that war-torn eastern European country that went through a nasty war in the 90s. Anyways, I am proud of my country, I mean Croatia. But, as Americans, we should be ashamed.

U.S. life expectancy will soon be on par with Mexico’s and the Czech Republic’s: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/0...

(non-paywalled version: https://archive.md/3EpBi)

Anyways, there are countries with national health insurance ("socialized medicine") and there are also countries that have universal health insurance coverage (guaranteed issue health insurance, which you are required to have under law).

From an access perspective Germany is very similar to the US, and has universal health insurance coverage. Switzerland has a system closer to what we have in the US, with respect to both access and privitization, and they do not seem to be having the problems that we have in the American healthcare system.

Just some food for thought...

If you look at the predicted life expectancy of an American in 2045 for example, you would know it is time to be "making plans". You would also know that the price differential on salaries between America and other places in the world as a person in STEM is not worth the payoff long-term. Plus, you cannot put a price on your health. This is just one eerie statistic, for example: Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139 You cannot evade a statistic like that by going to the "best hospitals" or by receiving the "best healthcare" in America, or by having "good insurance".

By the way, I did become a dual US|EU citizen over American healthcare, as somebody who is chronically ill with 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin dependent).

Problem is, I don’t think it’s going to last. The ageing population means health costs will spiral, and health budgets will consume an unsustainably large proportion of revenues.