Healthcare $$$

Why does is cost $498 to deliver a baby in Canada but 10 times as much in the US? The simple answer is because we pay more.

But why?

Is the greater cost reflective of higher medical school tuition and expenses, the quality of the healthcare provided, the cost of living in the US, systemic medical industry greed, or a combination of factors? This article doesn't answer that question but the data certainly is surprising.

From The Washington Post...

There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. If you leave everything else the same -- the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need -- but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.

In other countries, governments set the rates that will be paid for different treatments and drugs, even when private insurers are doing the actual purchasing. In our country, the government doesn't set those rates for private insurers, which is why the prices paid by Medicare, as you'll see on some of these graphs, are much lower than those paid by private insurers. You'll also notice that the bit showing American prices is separated into blue and yellow: That shows the spread between the average price (the top of the blue) and the 90th percentile (the top of the yellow). Other countries don't have nearly that much variation, again because their pricing is standard.

If you want to see the full packets of comparative charts, click here to download the pdf.