A study of international prices finds American patients pay much more across a wide array of common services.
Why does health care cost so much more in the United States than in other countries? As health economists love to say: “It’s the prices, stupid.”
As politicians continue to lament the system’s expense, and more Americans struggle to pay the high and often unpredictable bills that can accompany their health problems, it’s worth looking at just how weird our prices really are relative to the rest of the world.
The International Federation of Health Plans, a group representing the C.E.O.s of health insurers worldwide, publishes a guide every few years on the international cost for common medical services. Its newest report, on 2017 prices, came out this month. Every time, the upshot is vivid and similar: For almost everything on the list, there is a large divergence between the United States and everyone else.
We definitely have an “illness-profit” system here in the USA with more and more monopolies taking over everything, including pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and even small local outpatient centers as well as specialty care centers, all to have the means to raise prices and more importantly, profits. It is the biggest scam our country has ever known, and is happening right under our noses with no government oversight to stop it.