3 ms·

I'm loathe to agree here, but you are highlighting a point that people miss about other OECD countries. Many very expensive treatments available in the US are c

by ch4s3 11mo ago

I'm loathe to agree here, but you are highlighting a point that people miss about other OECD countries. Many very expensive treatments available in the US are covered by insurance (to a point) but are simply unavailable in the UK, Japan, or France. In the US a tremendous amount of money is spent to extend lives by a few scant months at a very low quality of life.

HDThoreaun 11mo ago
End of life is the biggest problem with over use but it's not limited to that. In the US literally everyone who shows up at the emergency room talking about chest pain gets an expensive ct scan even if theres effectively no chance of it catching anything. Procedures that have been shown in studies to not work are still prescribed, because why not/lobbying groups of the doctors that perform them whine loudly enough. At no point is anyone in the system trying to save money, so costs just grow and grow and grow. I think about the fact that everyone in the hospital gets a private room a lot. Having a private room does not increase health outcomes at all, but it costs an absolute ton of money. It does increase satisfaction so it should be available, but hospital users should be able to choose shared rooms and get a portion of the savings they create but this just isnt possible in the US because of the incentives we've created.