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Part of the reason it is more expensive in the US is because medical school is very costly in the US. This increases the financial risk of those aquiring a medi
by jernfrost 9y ago
Part of the reason it is more expensive in the US is because medical school is very costly in the US. This increases the financial risk of those aquiring a medical degree. Higher risks usually demands higher profits in the market.
Hence free university education could be a factor in reducing US health care costs.
Fundamentally you see how the free market approach to everything drives up costs everywhere.
Or more specifically drives up costs in industries/services which don’t naturally have functioning markets.
Free market approaches to health care found in Europe or Asia that works tend to be strongly regulated. E.g. max prices for procedures
- xyzzyz 9y agoPart, but definitely not the main reason. If the doctors worked for free, US would still be more expensive than Germany or Japan.
- epmaybe 9y agoAgreed. There are around 80,000 medical students in any given year in the US. Assume that all of them pay $50,000 per year in tuition. That's maybe $4b per year. The costs of health insurance, diagnostic testing, pharmaceuticals, etc more than eclipse that number.
- bkmartin 9y agoAnd the bigger problem is that there is profiteering at every step of the way... Medical Insurance, devices, private testing labs, hospitals, doctors, pharma...it all adds up. As someone else said, it's a free market without a real market for competition... I don't remember where I heard it, so citation needed, but the number that sticks on my head is that we spend 25% on administration alone. Lots of billing companies exist just to handle the complicated mess we have created... More profits in the system.