Why do Americans put up with this?
by digby
Health care costs is a somewhat ambiguous concept, but an insurance company that needs to pay for treatments all around the world needs to reduce it to a concrete index. That’s what French HMOs MGEN and LMDE have done with this map. It shows how much the company needs to be prepared to pay out to treat one of its patients if they need treatment abroad:
You can see here that poorer countries are broadly cheaper than richer ones, which makes sense because labor input costs are lower. But you also see that the United States is off-the-charts expensive compared places like Canada, Germany, Sweden, Korea, or the Netherlands.
Why is this ok with everyone? I don’t get it. It’s not as if our health is better or our lives are longer. We just pay through the nose for stuff that people in other countries with comparable economies pay much less for.
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