[OPE] Super-profits in US health care: it sucks?

Mr Obama would like to subsidize healthcare for the poor more, and the
health sector would also love that I'm sure, it makes them look not only
more humane but also earns them even more money...

A fascinating new study on US health care from the McKinsey Global
Institute, the research arm of the famed consulting company...

"provides a plausible estimate of the extent of overspending: almost one
third.This means that, compared with other advanced societies, the
United States spends about a third more on health care than high
American incomes alone would predict. (...) For the extra money,
[Americans] receive no indisputably large benefit in national
well-being. (...) What really drives health spending, the study finds,
is that Americans receive more costly medical services than other
peoples do, and pay more for them. On a population-adjusted basis, the
number of CT scans in 2005 was 72 percent higher in the United States
than in Germany; U.S. reimbursement rates were four times higher. Knee
replacements were 90 percent more frequent than in the average wealthy
country and are growing rapidly. In 2005, there were 750,000 knee and
hip replacements, up 70 percent in five years, reports the journal
Health Affairs. We have a health-care system that reflects our national
values." http://www.newsweek.com/id/178872/page/1

Oh when we walk, it always feels so nice
And when we talk, it seems like paradise
Denis Denis, I'm so in love with you

- Blondie, "Denis"

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Received on Mon Jan 12 02:32:50 2009