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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

#61

Post by maxxxxx »

TomMarius wrote: post #60
maxxxxx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deal with health care in the US and you will quickly learn that "you know, that's just how it is" too. There is a huge wall of inscrutable bureaucracy that's pretty much impenetrable. My only experience in Europe is Germany and I much prefer that system over the US. I don't know how it is in other countries.

German system is doing exceptionally well. The rest of Europe has it worse - especially the eastern part.

What country?

Germany has its own set of problems but it's still better than the US for most people. The US should compare itself against the best.

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

#62

Post by miluge »

TomMarius wrote: post #60
maxxxxx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deal with health care in the US and you will quickly learn that "you know, that's just how it is" too. There is a huge wall of inscrutable bureaucracy that's pretty much impenetrable. My only experience in Europe is Germany and I much prefer that system over the US. I don't know how it is in other countries.

German system is doing exceptionally well. The rest of Europe has it worse - especially the eastern part.

From my own experience coming from the French system to dealing with the Romanian one, it was for sure a hassle. Just getting them to fill paperwork in order to get my sick leave for work was pain and asking for a paper so my insurance could refund me was akin to setting the whole building on fire ( which wouldn't be bad ).

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

#63

Post by A2017U1 »

nabla9 wrote: post #30
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 healthca…

> US is often in top 10, or at least mid-tier.

Yet US govt healthcare spending is absurdly high and far out of line with the rest of the world either per person or by gdp.

Seems to suggest that efficiency is terrible and that's still ignoring the out of pocket costs to the end consumer.

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

#64

Post by cmurf »

frockington wrote: post #3
maxxxxx wrote: post #2

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

As much as dissapointment the Affordable Care Act was, at least someone tried something. If only we could learn from those mistakes and make incremental changes. Politicians are to obsessed with either tearing it all down or healthcare for all for "free", no middle ground

PPACA is the incremental change. There wasn't the political capital to effectively destroy the health insurance industry by leaving only VIP insurance (really it's not insurance, it's a "pay extra to cut in front of the line" product).

Democrats apparently didn't have the votes to even make Medicare or Medicaid an optional buy-in, to compete with marketplace insurance. This in particular is necessary in a huge land area of the U.S. where there's only one or two insurance providers.

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

#65

Post by cmurf »

rectang wrote: post #31
maxxxxx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I think there's something to your point here, I wish for the sake of avoiding flamewars per the HN guidelines you could put it in less partisan terms. (For example by avoiding naming specific political parties.) I would have liked to see more experimentation on price transparency.

How are facts partisan? It's been the stated party platform from the moment it became law.

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

#66

Post by jasonlotito »

jasonlotito wrote: post #28

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…

I hate meta comments, but I love how posting facts gets voted down here just because people don't like the facts. That's why autism support in Canada is a shit-show.

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

#67

Post by masonic »

cmurf wrote: post #64
frockington wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as dissapointment the Affordable Care Act was, at least someone tried something. If only we could learn from those mistakes and make incremental changes. Politicians are to obsessed with either tearing it all down or healthcare for all for "free", no middle ground

PPACA is the incremental change. There wasn't the political capital to effectively destroy the health insurance industry by leaving only VIP insurance (really it's not insurance, it's a "pay extra to cut in front of the line" product). Democrats apparently didn't have the votes to even make Medicare or Medicaid an optional buy-in, to compete with marketplace insurance. This in particular is necessary in a huge land a…

  Democrats apparently didn't have the votes
Democrats had the only votes and the only say in every element of "Obamacare". Republicans were not even allowed to see the bill before the vote was taken, hence zero Republicans voting for it.

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

#68

Post by dragonwriter »

masonic wrote: post #67
cmurf wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PPACA is the incremental change. There wasn't the political capital to effectively destroy the health insurance industry by leaving only VIP insurance (really it's not insurance, it's a "pay extra to cut in front of the line" product). Democrats apparently didn't have the votes to even make Medicare or Medicaid an optional buy-in, to compete with marketplace insurance. This in particular is necessary in a huge land a…

Democrats apparently didn't have the votes Democrats had the only votes and the only say in every element of "Obamacare". Republicans were not even allowed to see the bill before the vote was taken, hence zero Republicans voting for it.

> Democrats had the only votes and the only say in every element of "Obamacare".

That's not actually true (Republicans had a significant say, even though thet universally ended up voting no), but even if it was the public option had long been controversial among Democratic politicians despite it (and even moreso simple single payer, which had a majority support ) long being overwhelmingly popular among Democrstic voters and having stronger support nationally than the purchase mandate w/o public option approach.

> Republicans were not even allowed to see the bill before the vote was taken,

Yeah, they were, they were also involved in the Committee process in the Senate in which it was drafted. They also filibustered it for quite a while, which gave them even more time in which to read it.

And of course Republicans in the House had still more time to read it, since it was voted on in the House after the vote in the Senate.

There are lots of reasons you can argue might have been behind Republicans voting against, not being allowed to read it is not one of them.

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