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Politics : A US National Health Care System?
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To: Lane3 who wrote (6433)3/22/2009 8:18:10 PM
From: i-node1 Recommendation  Read Replies (2) of 42652
 
I disagree. It's pretty simple. If you buy 100 pies near home for $10 each your total cost is $1000. If you buy 80 pies near home at $10 each and 20 pies farther away for $3 each including gas, your total cost is $860. Your pie cost is less.

Yeah, but it doesn't exactly work like that.

If you're talking "out of pocket cost to any given individual", I would agree with you. But if you look at the total cost of health care within the country, which we were, the savings aren't nearly so dramatic.

While reimportation isn't part of the "medical tourist" scenario, it IS part of the concept of moving health care costs out of the country where they are lower. But that burden still ends up in the United States, borne by other drug consumers.

The arrangement with hospitals is different. When you take a patient from a NYC hospital and take him to Costa Rica for treatment, there is some savings to him personally. And a minimal savings to the US hospital for direct costs of the patient treatment. But the fixed costs remain the same and just have to be borne by other hospital customers. For example, every major hospital is going to have a CT scanner; one fewer patients using it reduces the operating cost of the hospital only for consumables, which isn't much. Most of the cost is fixed and the hospital is going to have the equipment whether or not some number of patients leave the care of that hospital.

To measure the cost of the health care burden in the United States you have to look at the marginal costs (and revenue), which tells a substantially different story.
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