Quote:
Originally Posted by classicman
Where is the waste - specifically?
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This was addressed by a very good study by a nonpartisan group that Undertoad mentioned in post 152 of this thread and that I linked to directly again about a month ago. It really is worth visiting and spending a lot of time digesting. There is a tremendous amount of information there.
There is an interactive graphic overview
here. And the front page that takes you to the detailed study is
here.
It shows that by far the greatest rates of waste in the US health care system are in insurance and administration of health care. But we over pay in virtually every other area of health care. The only place where we are cheaper than other countries is in home care and long term care. The report suggests that is because the nurses who do that work are underpaid compared to other countries. The doctors (mainly the specialists, not the general practitioners and OB/GYNs) are payed more than in the other developed counties.
To read the chart, the light blue area is what the average costs are in other developed counties. The dark blue areas are how much more we pay for those areas of health care. The orange is where we pay less. And then at the far left is all of the bar graphs added up into the total.
As of 2003, we pay $477 billion a year more than we should, compared to other developed countries, which works out to around $1,500 per person per year. Makes the cost of reform pale in comparison, assuming we can eliminate the waste.