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Does Higher Health Care Spending Lead To Better Patient Outcomes?
First time accepted submitter ericjones12398 writes "If you haven't seen the words 'health care' in news headlines lately, you must be living under a rock. What seems most controversial among the latest research and news is a flawed payment scale that undervalues primary care and overvalues specialty care. There is evidence suggesting that publicly funded health care spending (i.e., Medicare) has not been based on primary health care needs. Rather, In the U.S. Medicare spending relies on a resource-based relative value scale (RBRVS) which seems to promote higher spending without evidence of better patient outcomes. A study comparing spending and mortality rates in Ontario had the opposite findings however, supporting a link between higher spending and better outcomes for patients. What are we doing different in the U.S.? "
We have a medical-industrial complex. Money's gotta flow.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The answer is no. Next question?
I don't have a sig.
The United States runs a "for profit" model. Canada runs a "for better society" model. In one model the fundamental design of one system dictates that consumers spend as much as possible and receive as little as possible. The fundamentals of the other design dictate that consumers all receive adequate care, and the only reason to spend more is to get more.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
That's a rather accurate and complete description.
I only have a couple things to add.
The quoted price is what you risk paying if you don't have insurance. So a high quoted price is something good for the insurer as it will scare you into buying their overpriced services.
Some insurers might pay more than others for the same service, so one could think they would want to reduce the "quoted price" so they all benefit by paying less. But I am more and more convinced they actually benefit too much from the absence of reasonable public prices and therefore are trying to keep the non-transparent pricing in place.
I am not familiar with many drugs, but the few I know make it clear that your insurer doesn't care about getting you a good price for drugs. The copay of drugs can be 2 to 3 times more than the list price or quoted price of the same drug in France (whereas food, clothing, gas and many other commodities are rather cheaper in the US). This is a clear indication that the insurance company acts like a broker that helps you buy services but it actually doesn't care if you get ripped off. The only meaningful difference is that in France, the insurance company negotiates the list price down. So everybody, even those who don't have insurance benefit from the negotiation.
If we were able to switch insurance providers easily, we would be able to choose the best brokers and also the best coverage. The only issue is that you don't want freeloaders in the system, so you need a minimum level of coverage that people must get. Otherwise they can just go with a dummy insurance for 2$ and then when they are sick they can just benefit from our humanity (i.e. we are human so we won't let them without care when they show up at the emergency room).
Overall, healthcare is an issue that is both social and individual. Therefore it can't be simply handled by pure market or pure governmental solutions. But at least we should make sure we have working market components in the solution and working governmental components too.