Tuesday, February 06, 2018

UK v. US Healthcare

According to the OECD, the average UK spend per head on healthcare is $4,192 (£2,989) – and it has a life expectancy of 81.6 years. 

The US spends more than twice this amount, $9,892 – far more than any other country in the world – and yet life expectancy is far lower.

The US government spends more money on healthcare than the UK government does, despite the latter managing to offer a comprehensive, single-payer health system for the price. The total is $4,860 per person – that’s more than the UK’s total health budget, and $1,500 a head more than the UK government spends.

The reason US healthcare costs so much is its immense complexity: hospitals charge insurers as much as they can, doctors are used to prescribing expensive tests and drugs, and the whole system is so complicated that huge swathes of funding go on administrating the whole mess.

The US healthcare system is one which is bloated, ludicrously expensive, ruinous to many of its citizens, and leaves tens of millions of them totally unprotected against sickness or injury. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/05/americans-uk-health-system-trump-nhs

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