(March 22, 2017 at 12:18 pm)popeyespappy Wrote:(March 22, 2017 at 11:09 am)pocaracas Wrote: I see those numbers and have no cause to doubt them.
But something must be wrong somewhere, because it's obvious the US is spending much more on healthcare per capita than most other countries, while leaving a large swath of the population unable to access medical care.
The money is going somewhere... somewhere it doesn't go on this side of the Atlantic.
Maybe there are redundancies in place that double or treble the actual cost of procedures?
Maybe the non-profits are doing some creative accounting?
Maybe something else, or a messy combination of many bits and pieces?...
You guys tell me.
Nonprofits earn extra money they just can't pay it out to investors. Most of it is reinvested in the nonprofit or used to fund charitable activities.
Yes a messy combination of many bits and pieces. I don't know how to fix it, and as far as I know no one else does either. As I said, I'm open to suggestions.
I'll ask those of you with single payer systems this. What you have now is apparently working now, but is it sustainable? What will your per capita costs for healthcare be in another 30 years?
According to this here (https://data.oecd.org/portugal.htm), Portugal spent, last year (2016) $167USD per capita on Healthcare.
The UK (https://data.oecd.org/united-kingdom.htm#profile-health) spent $3163USD per capita last year.
The US (https://data.oecd.org/united-states.htm#profile-health) spent $4672USD per capita.
From my point of view, the Portuguese system is, at the hospital level, similar to the UK one. At the pharmacy, it's very different as the British pay a flat price for their medicine (I think £7.5), while in Portugal we pay what the pharmaceuticals agree with the government and it obviously depends on the medication, with some medicine costing over 50€ for a weekly dose, while others cost less than 1€ for a full treatment.
On both countries, no one is denied healthcare, and no one needs to rob a bank to pay for it. It's virtually free.
In the US, the expenditure is greater and still...
I think the root causes for this disparity must be found and taken care of...
