Where does America get it's money?

It's a flawed system, but if you've got a good health plan of plenty of money, you've got access to state of the art, cutting edge medical technology that my relatives in europe can only dream of.

I agree. If you have money then you can get great healthcare. But there again, if you have money you could probably get fabulous healthcare in Guatemala.

It's all very well that a Saudi King is renting out an entire hospital so he can have an operation to remove an ingrowing toenail but how does that help the rest of us - ordinary Americans who continue to struggle with ever increasing deductables for ever crappier services - or for those of us who, God forbid, are left out of the "commonhealth" altogether?

Sigh, the usual 'the NHS is expensive' rubbish.

The Americans spend 16% of GDP on their crazy heathcare system - we spend 8% of GDP on the NHS, the French spend 11%. The NHS is much cheaper than pretty much all healthcare systems in the industrialised world.

Now I'm confused. If an American NHS would be cheaper, why are they so against the idea?

Now I'm confused. If an American NHS would be cheaper, why are they so against the idea?

That's an interesting point. Considering that the American state spends around 16.5% of GDP on healthcare, compared to Europe (France 11%, UK 8%, Ireland 8.5%) would you not expect to get better treatment. The money as a percent of GDP (forget the system for a minute) spent on healthcare in the USA is a European socialists wetdream. Surely the better treatment is simply a result of the fact the the American state pumps money into healthcare on a level not matched in Europe - a fact that probably surprises most Americans, and indeed most Europeans. Imagine how good the NHS would be if it's budget was doubled...

I made a thread on this sort of thing a while back - some interesting stats in the first post.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?p=28573589

Now I'm confused. If an American NHS would be cheaper, why are they so against the idea?

It means higher taxes which is incredibly unpopular in the States - even if it's cheaper overall. The rich benefit from having access to the best hospitals while millions are left without proper healthcare. A blanket system without using insurance providers would be better for the poor but worse for the rich which is why you won't get it happening.

I saw that post. The criteria is selected in such a way as to make the NHS look good and the US to look bad. If the criteria were "cancer survivability rates", "access to MRIs and other leading edge technologies" and "were you able to get an appointment in less than a week?" The US system would have come out on top.

You can get fabulous plastic surgery in Guatemala, but if you have the means to seek out the best hospitals in the world your journey is going to take you to the US. You aren't going to fly to Guatemala for the latest, most state of the art treatments for brain surgery, for example.

The top ten hospitals in the world are all in the US:

John Hopkins, Baltimore, Maryland
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, California
New York Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell
University of California Medical Center, San Francisco, California
Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

It's only when you get to about 17th on the list when you see any hospitals from europe like Hôpitaux de Rouen.



Is your plan really that bad? I find it hard to imagine that a bright guy like you who makes a decent living can't get a decent plan. We all have soaring premiums but that is because insurance companies now have to cover adult children up to 25 years of age and the money has to come from somewhere. I think the costs are going to keep increasing as politicians put a larger and larger financial burden on the insurance companies.

There is a lot wrong with our system like access and high costs, but there is a lot right with our system too. I'd like to keep what's best about our system and fix the things that could use improvement. So far it seems like the politicians have just continued down the path to ruining what's right with our healthcare system, and not solving the problem with what's wrong with it at all. I don't know what your thoughts are about Obamacare, but there is little in that bill that's going to make things any better for us and a lot that is just plain illegal. There is no way you can have different sets of rules for amish people and union members than for regular folks and the “insurance mandate” violates the Commerce Clause and is therefore unconstitutional. I think over the next few months you are going see judges having a really hard time with many aspects of the new healthcare bill.

What solution do you like best Howard? Are you a public option guy? Or would you prefer some kind of free market solution? It sounds to me like you really like the NHS. Would you like to see an NHS-esque system applied here?

Mine is pretty good as it should be because it costs about $17k a year (I pay about $3 of that) But then again, I work for one of the largest conglomerates in the world with a huge amount of buying power. Lot's of people don't have such generous employers or plans.

Not sure what the solution is. I'm certainly not for a completely socialised public system in the NHS model but I'm not a big fan of the private insurance/hospital deal over here. It's an expensive way of doing medicine and it just can't be right to leave 50 million people out on a limb. But both of these are perhaps examples of the extremeties of approaches to healthcare. There must be a better way of doing this.

Your answer shows why it's so hard to fix the healthcare system in the US. Everyone agrees that it is deeply flawed, but no one knows how to go about fixing it. I think a good place to start would be reigning in the lawyers. There should be some kind of cap on what people can collect when their 85 year old grandmother has complications from her quadruple bypass and the doctors did everything they could to save her. All the needless tests, procedures and double and triple checking things out of fear of getting sued can't be helping costs. On my last doctor visit, I asked a simple question, one the doctor should have been able to answer candidly and he did a BS no-answer spin that would have even impressed Bill Clinton. It was obvious to me that he was scared of being sued and had been coached by legal experts.

Tort reform was what the doctors really wanted, but there was nothing in the healthcare bill that addressed that concern

Tort reform would be a fine start but in fact many states already have such laws in place. Florida, I know for a fact, has caps on medical malpractice suits.

But you know, it's not just the fear of being sued that drives doctors to subject patients to a load of needless tests and procedures. It's also the fact that for every test and procedure they do they charge the insurance company for it. It's like a big expensive restaurant menu "oh....hey, lets have a go on the spinal tap......we can charge $3000 for that.......what about the MRI.......can't miss that one" They don't order the soup and salad - they order the Lobster. That's because someone else is paying the bill.

I was a victim of these shenannigans the year before last. 2 MRI's, a spinal tap, a whole bunch of blood works, and christ knows what else. I know for a fact that my insurers were billed about $20,000. The doctors got rich, the insurers got ripped off, and I spent a bag of money on deductables. Of course, the insurers don't really GAF because they put the premiums up every year anyway so it was me who was left (a) out of pocket, and (b) none the wiser as to what was ailing me.