I don’t claim to be any kind of an expert on the US healthcare debate. Far from it. But what I do know is that in its totality, healthcare spending in the US is one of the most inefficient uses of money anywhere in the world. Despite the fact that well over half this spending is private, it fails to obey the first principles of efficient market theory. US healthcare makes even the notorious inefficiences of state spending in the UK look tolerable by comparison.Monsanto poisons us, and health insurance companies “cure” us, well, until we actually need to use their insurance for a serious disease.America spends vastly more per head of population and as a percentage of GDP on healthcare than any other nation in the world (see accompanying bar chart), yet this fails to result in notably better life expectancy or quality of life for the US as a whole than other advanced nations that spend far less. Nor is this lack of value for money accounted for by the averaging down effect caused by the sizeable, uninsured minority that enjoys only sub-standard healthcare. American medicine, knowing that in the end it is the insurer that picks up the tab, has a tendency to apply the most extraordinary array of safety first, mainly unnecessary but hugely costly, tests and procedures to almost any condition. This enriches the medical profession and its support industries but is steadily bankrupting the nation and its corporations.
Healthcare Waste in the U.S.
Jeremy Warner writes in the Telegraph,
US healthcare expenditure – the biggest waste of money in the world: