I've posted about this a LOT here on HN, because I live in a country (Uruguay) that has a good level of medicine and prices are way cheaper (heart surgery as de

I've posted about this a LOT here on HN, because I live in a country (Uruguay) that has a good level of medicine and prices are way cheaper (heart surgery as described would be at least an order of magnitude cheaper than in the U.S.). One possible explanation I came up with was: U.S. hospitals have legions of well-paid administrators doing paperwork for insurance companies, which will have legions of people doing paperwork on their side, and government doing its bit, and lawyers doing their thing. All that money is obviously not going directly into healthcare, it's basically monstruous bureaucracy friction. I suspect "real" healthcare costs, even factoring expensive U.S. doctors, would be shockingly cheap. There are also other "hidden" legal costs, such as the cost of malpractice insurance, and overcosts due to doctors being extremely worried about being sued over malpractice and ordering unnecessary tests. Is there a "transparent" U.S. medical institution whose expense records could be examined to come up with where all the money is going? That said, the article compares with Ohio's Cleveland Clinic, which is the most famous heart surgery clinic. Supply and demand alone will make heart surgery there an order of magnitude more expensive, regardless of actual costs. But I've heard most U.S. clinics arent that much cheaper. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6077593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6077593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6019464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6019464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5763001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5763001 (I was really surprised by that one, why ARE ambulances so expensive in the U.S.?)