.John Goodman writes:
When you and I buy something, the cost to us is the price we pay for it. But that is not necessarily true for society as a whole. The social cost of something may be a whole lot more or a whole lot less than what people actually spend on it; and that is especially true in health care.
In the United States and throughout the developed world, the market for medical care has been so systematically suppressed that no one ever sees a real price for anything. …
[O]ther countries are more aggressive than we are at shifting costs and hiding costs. They use their buying power to suppress the incomes of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel much more than the United States does …
[T]here is another way to assess the cost of health care. We can count up the real resources being used. Other things equal, a country that has more doctors per capita, more hospital beds, etc., is devoting more of its real income to health care than one that uses fewer resources — regardless of its reported spending. On this score, the United States looks really good.
Read the whole post: Do We Really Spend More and Get Less? | John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org.
See also:
Health Care Reform: Do Other Countries Have the Answers?
Myth Two of The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care
