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0 sats \ 10 replies \ @kr OP 28 Feb \ parent \ on: The US is responsible for 41% of global healthcare spending charts_and_numbers
yeah, i never would have guessed it was that high.
that’s nearly the level of US dollar dominance in global reserve holdings (58%), and there are no network effects in health care like there are for liquidity in finance.
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Misconception. Fat people get their heart attacks and die in their 50s and 60s, which is actually quite optimal from an actuarial standpoint because they've paid out in taxes for most of their functional lives.
Real spending comes from frail elderly care as we keep these patients alive and they bounce back from the hospital in their 80s and 90s, go to nursing homes because their kids can't take care of them, slowly develop dementia and come back with recurrent pneumonias, UTIs etc.
In most other countries common sense prevails and these people would be made DNR/DNI and pass comfortably and peacefully but here the guilty out of state son who hasn't seen mom in 3 years will tell us "she's a fighter" and the patient will end up in the ICU for 2 months of suffering and being kept alive.
Sometimes I fucking feel like such a goddamn cunt. It's like I'm constantly tripping balls over every little thing, and making everyone around me want to strangle me with their bare fucking hands. At least I'm aware of how much of a piece of shit I can be sometimes. I have to figure out how to fix this fucked-up attitude before someone ends up shanking me in the gut with a rusty knife.
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This would require a much longer post at some point, but the prices in American healthcare are fake. It's a huge grift designed to generate tax write-offs and commissions (although I don't think they're called that). No one is actually paying the amount that medical providers record as having been spent.
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I know exactly what you are talking about. I've heard it explained several times. Yeah it would take a much longer post but he's right @kr. The "healthcare" market in the US is rigged. As in they over-charge and insurance and providers negotiate down. I should have mentioned that. I forget that most people don't know this. It always frustrates me when people act like US healthcare is a free market system. Its not. Very rigged.
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I'll keep this in mind for a future post, because it is fascinating. There are a few really good episodes of Econ Talk that get into it, as well as a bunch of interviews with the Surgery Center of Oklahoma guy.