US Healthcare Waste (Economist)

[Tristan Orford]

The sheer numbers involved are simply staggering.  If they are even half of what's on this page, it goes beyond the unforgivable.  250-350 BN in unnecessary care (aside from another 100BN in unco-ordinated and avoidable care), 125-175BN in fraud and 175-250BN in inefficiencies.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/06/us-health-care-spending

[James]

The US spends about 15-16% of GDP on healthcare; Britain is making a major overhaul of their system because it is reaching just 10%...sickening.

[Adam A. Altman]

parallel though unrelated to this thread, the dailyshow this week pointed out that

greece, for all the fuss recently = $44k debt per capital.
US = $45k.

[Lindsay Hong]

The whole cost of healthcare issue is extremely frustrating. My Master of Public Health program has given me a closer look at some of the problems. It’s frightening to see how our health care system operates. It’s even scarier to see some of the research and programs that are funded and the people running them.

The main problem is that our system is incredibly fragmented and incentives are not aligned to benefit both the patient and provider. The administrative costs due to this are astronomical. 

Many people in public health and medicine are not business-minded, which further creates inefficiencies in how many programs are run and how research is conducted.

Looking at the social determinants of health complicates the problem. Lowering healthcare costs is not as simple as making sure everyone has health insurance. A lot of it has to do with access to care, built environment, and general mistrust of the healthcare system. My main issue with the ACA is that the government did not provide healthcare providers with the tools and resources to make the changes they need to make.

Lindsay