6 ms·

Can you please provide some form of a source for your statement? I read this a lot, but I can't find any factual basis for the statement. The US is known for ha

Can you please provide some form of a source for your statement? I read this a lot, but I can't find any factual basis for the statement. The US is known for having the highest cost of health care per capita, more than twice that of France and the UK, two countries commonly named for having socialized health care [0]. 0: https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-of-healthcare-countries-ranked-2019-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/cost-of-healthcare-countries...

ekianjo 7y ago
Please find me another country that creates as many new drugs as the US and that has a national health care system. If you dont have such an example it cannot be a fair comparison. the world is not summed up by a single variable.
- majewsky 7y ago
  Why are you moving the goalposts by now requiring the country in question to "create as many new drugs as the US"? I don't see how that relates to this discussion at all.
- kiney 7y ago
  switzerland has way more new drug patents (per capita) and universal healthcare
  - cyphar 7y ago
    Switzerland (unfortunately) doesn't have what I (as an Australian) would recognise as universal healthcare. It's very similar to the "public option" to use the US terminology. It is still closer to modern healthcare than the US, but it's not the same thing (and suffers from problems that other more progressive healthcare systems do not suffer from).
    - stephanozzz 7y ago
      > suffers from problems that other more progressive healthcare systems do not suffer from Can you elaborate? Genuinely interested in the details.
  - refurb 7y ago
    That’s because several major pharmaceutical companies are head quartered there - not because the actual research is done there.
- mcv 7y ago
  Many new drugs are developed in European countries. This is not something that's unique to the US. Americans just pay more for the same drugs.
  - chimeracoder 7y ago
    > Many new drugs are developed in European countries. This is not something that's unique to the US. Americans just pay more for the same drugs. About 50% of all R&D worldwide happens in the US. The US's global share has shrunk a bit, but only because China and India have grown rapidly, not because Europe has ramped up (it hasn't). Some new drugs are developed in European countries, or by European pharmaceutical companies - that's true. But European pharmaceutical companies all make a disproportionate amount of their revenue off of sales in the US market. So Europeans quite literally benefit the most from the fact that Americans pay more for the same drugs.
    - mcv 7y ago
      Yeah, but that's America's choice to pay so much more for drugs that the rest of the world pays less for. It doesn't make the US system in any way better.
      - chimeracoder 7y ago
        > Yeah, but that's America's choice to pay so much more for drugs that the rest of the world pays less for. It doesn't make the US system in any way better. Yes, I agree that it's a foolish choice for the US to subsidize foreign countries' healthcare in this manner. Regardless of this decision that we both agree is foolish, it means that it's misleading to compare cost-effectiveness between the US and other countries directly.
        mcv 7y ago
        I disagree. You can still compare. There's nothing that requires the US to subsidise corporations. They just choose to do so by not negotiating lower prices.
tzs 7y ago
He's actually right about exploding costs outside the US. Just as costs have exploded in the US, they have also exploded in most other first world countries (and also many non-first world countries). Source provided below. Yes, the US has the highest cost. But the ratio between the US and others has stayed roughly the same over the last 50 years (maybe longer--that's as far back as my data source goes). The US pays twice as much as France now because we paid twice as much as France in 1990, and both systems have had costs explode by about the same factor since then. Here's a table of costs per capita in US dollars for the UK, France, and the US: Year UK FR US 1980 385 659 1036 1990 782 1458 2700 2000 1561 2686 4557 2010 2871 4048 7939 2018 4070 4965 10586 Here it is, with each country's cost divided by that country's 1980 cost: Year UK FR US 1990 2.0 2.2 2.6 2000 4.1 4.1 4.4 2010 7.5 6.1 7.7 2018 10.6 7.5 10.2 If you do the same thing with most other EU countries, or OECD countries, or other first world countries, the results are similar. Everyone's costs are going up at rates that are in about the same ballpark. Source: 1. Go to https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm 2. Uncheck "latest data available". This enables the year range selector control. 3. Use the year range selector to expand the range to 1970-2018. 4. The chart will then show the total costs in US dollars/capita by year of health care in 50 countries. You can use the "Highlighted Countries" drop down to narrow that to select a "background" of OECD, EU, Euro Area, G7, or G20 if you want. You can then add individual countries using the list on the left of that dialog. 5. You can change what is shown from total to government/compulsory, voluntary, or out-of-pocket and you can change the measure from per capita to % of GDP.

ekianjo 7y ago

Please find me another country that creates as many new drugs as the US and that has a national health care system. If you dont have such an example it cannot be a fair comparison. the world is not summed up by a single variable.

majewsky 7y ago
Why are you moving the goalposts by now requiring the country in question to "create as many new drugs as the US"? I don't see how that relates to this discussion at all.
kiney 7y ago
switzerland has way more new drug patents (per capita) and universal healthcare
- cyphar 7y ago
  Switzerland (unfortunately) doesn't have what I (as an Australian) would recognise as universal healthcare. It's very similar to the "public option" to use the US terminology. It is still closer to modern healthcare than the US, but it's not the same thing (and suffers from problems that other more progressive healthcare systems do not suffer from).
  - stephanozzz 7y ago
    > suffers from problems that other more progressive healthcare systems do not suffer from Can you elaborate? Genuinely interested in the details.
- refurb 7y ago
  That’s because several major pharmaceutical companies are head quartered there - not because the actual research is done there.
mcv 7y ago
Many new drugs are developed in European countries. This is not something that's unique to the US. Americans just pay more for the same drugs.
- chimeracoder 7y ago
  > Many new drugs are developed in European countries. This is not something that's unique to the US. Americans just pay more for the same drugs. About 50% of all R&D worldwide happens in the US. The US's global share has shrunk a bit, but only because China and India have grown rapidly, not because Europe has ramped up (it hasn't). Some new drugs are developed in European countries, or by European pharmaceutical companies - that's true. But European pharmaceutical companies all make a disproportionate amount of their revenue off of sales in the US market. So Europeans quite literally benefit the most from the fact that Americans pay more for the same drugs.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Yeah, but that's America's choice to pay so much more for drugs that the rest of the world pays less for. It doesn't make the US system in any way better.
    - chimeracoder 7y ago
      > Yeah, but that's America's choice to pay so much more for drugs that the rest of the world pays less for. It doesn't make the US system in any way better. Yes, I agree that it's a foolish choice for the US to subsidize foreign countries' healthcare in this manner. Regardless of this decision that we both agree is foolish, it means that it's misleading to compare cost-effectiveness between the US and other countries directly.
      - mcv 7y ago
        I disagree. You can still compare. There's nothing that requires the US to subsidise corporations. They just choose to do so by not negotiating lower prices.

tzs 7y ago

He's actually right about exploding costs outside the US. Just as costs have exploded in the US, they have also exploded in most other first world countries (and also many non-first world countries). Source provided below. Yes, the US has the highest cost. But the ratio between the US and others has stayed roughly the same over the last 50 years (maybe longer--that's as far back as my data source goes). The US pays twice as much as France now because we paid twice as much as France in 1990, and both systems have had costs explode by about the same factor since then. Here's a table of costs per capita in US dollars for the UK, France, and the US: Year UK FR US 1980 385 659 1036 1990 782 1458 2700 2000 1561 2686 4557 2010 2871 4048 7939 2018 4070 4965 10586 Here it is, with each country's cost divided by that country's 1980 cost: Year UK FR US 1990 2.0 2.2 2.6 2000 4.1 4.1 4.4 2010 7.5 6.1 7.7 2018 10.6 7.5 10.2 If you do the same thing with most other EU countries, or OECD countries, or other first world countries, the results are similar. Everyone's costs are going up at rates that are in about the same ballpark. Source: 1. Go to https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm 2. Uncheck "latest data available". This enables the year range selector control. 3. Use the year range selector to expand the range to 1970-2018. 4. The chart will then show the total costs in US dollars/capita by year of health care in 50 countries. You can use the "Highlighted Countries" drop down to narrow that to select a "background" of OECD, EU, Euro Area, G7, or G20 if you want. You can then add individual countries using the list on the left of that dialog. 5. You can change what is shown from total to government/compulsory, voluntary, or out-of-pocket and you can change the measure from per capita to % of GDP.