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To: i-node who wrote (706993)

4/2/2013 2:15:38 AM

From: bentway

Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1574262

21 graphs that show America’s health-care prices are ludicrous
Posted by Ezra Klein on March 26, 2013 at 12:40 pm

Every year, the International Federation of Health Plans — a global insurance trade association that includes more than 100 insurers in 25 countries — releases survey data showing the prices that insurers are actually paying for different drugs, devices, and medical services in different countries. And every year, the data is shocking.

The IFHP just released the data for 2012. And yes, once again, the numbers are shocking.

This is the fundamental fact of American health care: We pay much, much more than other countries do for the exact same things. For a detailed explanation of why, see this article. But this post isn’t about the why. It’s about the prices, and the graphs.

One note: Prices in the United States are expressed as a range. There’s a reason for that. In other countries, prices are set centrally and most everyone, no matter their region or insurance arrangement, pays pretty close to the same amount. In the United States, each insurer negotiates its own prices, and different insurers end up paying wildly different amounts. That’s what Steven Brill’s explosive article was about, and it’s why you see U.S. prices expressed as a range rather than a single number.

After all these graphs, this final graph shouldn’t be a surprise.

Further reading:

- Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France.

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To: i-node who wrote (706993)	4/2/2013 2:16:56 AM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1574262

Your helpful charts 'o the day by digby These were compiled by Dave Johnson at Campaign for America's Future: In each of the charts below look for the year 1981, when Reagan took office.Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then: Working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down: This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top: And forced working people to spend down savings to get by: Which forced working people to go into debt: (total household debt as percentage ofGDP ) None of which has helped economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominalGDP growth.)* There are, of course, many reasons for all this. But there is no doubt that we've been in the clutches of conservative economic orthodoxy since 1980 and this is the result. Whether it's the cause or whether it's because it has no capacity to react to external events properly doesn't matter. It has failed. And is still failing. #Austerity . digby 3/31/2013 06:00:00 PM

To: i-node who wrote (706993)	4/2/2013 12:45:46 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1574262

"Everyone in the world knows Reagan single handedly ended the CW - Ever heard of SDI" Only totally partisan Republicans believe that. Reagan was just there drooling when it happened, after 40 years of presidents of both parties working the same plan. SDI never worked, and doesn't work to this day. We have no more chance of stopping ICBM's today than we did in 1950.