Something is rotten in the United States.
And today is one of those days when I just roll my eyes and think, we get what we deserve. We must be a nation of suckers. 300 million strong. Suckers and fools.
I'm talking about all of us.
The latest installment of Snapshots: Health Care Costs examines differences in health spending among higher-income countries that are part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As has been well documented, health spending per capita in the U.S. is among the highest in developed countries – 24% higher than in the next highest spending countries, and over 90% higher than in many other countries that would be considered to be global economic competitors. And, with over 15% of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to health, the U.S. is committing a substantially greater share of the economy to the health sector.
I ask, how can you read this stuff and come to any other conclusion? Really?
Here's our pitiful American reality from a just-released report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Health spending is rising faster than incomes in most developed countries, which raises questions about how these countries will pay for future health care needs. The issue may be particularly acute in the United States, which not only spends much more per capita on health care than any other country, but which also has had one of the fastest growth rates in health spending among developed countries. Despite this higher level of spending, the United States does not achieve better outcomes on many important health measures.
http://www.kff.org/...
If we're "not achieving better outcomes", where's the money going, sucker?
To improve the health of the American people? To make healthcare more affordable? To insure that all Americans have access to basic healthcare? To cover the 48 million uninsured? To make prescription drugs available to desperately ill Americans?
Nah.
"The story never changes," said Gerard Anderson, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "The United States is twice as expensive with about the same outcome.
"As a consumer, I don't mind paying more if I'm getting more, but that's just not the case in the U.S.," said Anderson, who publishes an annual review comparing the American health care system with those of its peers.
http://www.iht.com/...
So, lemme ask you again, where's the damn money going, sucker?
What may be less well known is the level of administrative waste in the United States health care system versus that of well-designed systems elsewhere. Although Americans tend to equate efficiency with private enterprise, that is not the case with the current system.
The American system, based on multiple insurers, builds in more unnecessary costs. Duplicate processing of claims, large numbers of insurance products, complicated bill-paying systems and high marketing costs add up to huge administrative expenses.
Then there is an enormous amount of paperwork required of American doctors and hospitals that simply does not exist in countries like Canada or Britain.
Sucker. Take this, idiot, moron, jackass. You don't like what--socialized medicine? You three-card Monti playing, American Idol watching, know-nothing jerk. Sucker. You are the dream of the for-profit insurance industry--they can sell you a plate of horse shit, and you'll ask for a second helping. Sucker.
One of the first major studies to quantify administrative costs in the United States was published in August 2003 in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study, conducted by three Harvard researchers, Steffie Woolhandler, Terry Campbell and David Himmelstein, concluded that such costs accounted for 31 percent of all health care expenditure in the United States.
Do Americans enjoy being pillaged, looted and served steaming platters of deceit? Why are Americans paying for Tiffany and getting Wal-Mart or worse? Have the thugs and miscreants--the for-profit insurance industry and its political champions, burrowed themselves so deeply and for so long into the vulnerable and gullible psyche of the American people, that we are no longer able to sort fact from fantasy, truth from lies, good from bad?
Despite everything that is known about the economic benefits of a single- payer system, that big stumbling block remains: many Americans do not believe in it. They have heard horror stories from abroad, often spread by partisan advocates, focusing on worst-case examples.
This is where your money is going, sucker.
A spreading corporate scandal over stock options has claimed the chief executive of the nation's second-largest health insurer. William McGuire will leave UnitedHealth Group after an independent investigation disclosed serious problems in the way stock options were granted at the company.
At the end of last year, McGuire's options were valued at $1.6 billion. At least 30 corporate officers and board members have resigned or been forced out at more than a dozen companies over the backdating of stock options.
http://www.npr.org/...
And this is what all that Tiffany health care isn't buying you or me.
After a brief respite in the mid-1990s, significant annual increases in health care spending over the past few years have refocused U.S. policymakers on the impacts that rising health care costs have on businesses and individuals and on federal and state budgets. Compared to other developed nations, the U.S. spends more on health care per capita and devotes a greater share of its GDP to health. Since 1980, the U.S. also has had among the highest average annual growth rates in per capita spending on health care. Despite this relatively high level of spending, the U.S. does not appear to provide substantially greater health resources to its citizens,10 or achieve substantially better health benchmarks, compared to other developed countries. This growing gap between health spending in the U.S. and that of other developed countries may encourage policymakers to look more closely at what people in the U.S. are getting for their far higher and faster growing spending on health care.
Like I said, just call me an American Sucker.