Healthcare Wait Times by Country - "Time waits for no one and the American healthcare system does not seem to be making it a priority. Despite the fact that the United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any other nation, it can still be difficult to see a doctor in a timely manner, especially if you are trying to get an appointment with a specialist or live outside of a major metro area... according to the 2016 KFF analysis of Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Eleven Countries, the United States came in third to last for the percentage of adults who were able to make a same-day or next day appointment when care was needed. Only fifty-one percent of Americans were successful in their same-day or next day appointment booking while the average of all of the eleven countries combined was fifty-seven percent."
The superior US healthcare system strikes again!
Is Dialysis a Test Case of Medicare for All? (Ep. 457) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "One research topic that Cooper himself has explored is what’s called surprise billing. That’s when, for instance, a patient with insurance goes to a hospital that’s in their insurance network but winds up seeing an out-of-network doctor, and gets stuck with a huge bill...
They analyzed about 12 years’ worth of Medicare claims and clinical data that included everything from drug dosing to staffing information to patient outcomes. Last year, they published their findings in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, one of the leading journals in the field. The economists identified three major changes after a for-profit chain like DaVita or Fresenius would acquire a dialysis clinic from an independent operator, many of which had been run as non-profits...
McDEVITT: We saw, on the first year of dialysis, the rate of being on the transplant waitlist or actually getting one fell about 9.5 percent.
Remember, the best possible outcome for a patient with kidney failure is to get a transplant; that obviates the need for dialysis...
McDEVITT: I have seen a number of interviews where representatives of DaVita and Fresenius, they actively tell patients not to seek out a transplant. “You’re not going to like it. It’s going to be a burden for you. You’re going to lose your family, your community. You’re coming here three times a week. We’re family now.”...
Short-sellers are often depicted as exploitive, taking advantage of a good company’s bad fortunes. Chanos doesn’t see it that way.
CHANOS: The real role that short-sellers play in the market that nobody else plays is that they’re the real-time financial detectives. And regulators are the financial archeologists in the system. The regulators will tell you what happened years and years later after you’ve lost all your money. And short-sellers have an economic incentive to ferret out fraud. We live in what I call right now the golden age of fraud. And so, companies with very questionable business models have actually done better than companies playing by the rules for the most part.
Superior US healthcare again! It's patients' faults for not checking if a doctor is out-of-network!
How to Fix the Incentives in Cancer Research (Ep. 449) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "SHARPLESS: One of the big successes in screening has been colonoscopy for colon cancer and pap smears for cervical cancer. The problem with screening is that it can be good at finding cancers that might not actually harm the patient. The classic example here is prostate cancer, which could be a very slow-growing cancer that may not hurt the patient, but having a big surgery or big radiation therapy would hurt the patient. And so balancing overdiagnosis and overtreatment with early detection and getting rid of bad cancers is a tough challenge...
It’s very expensive to make new drugs. It’s really hard to do. Most of them fail. And it really does cost the billions of dollars per successful drug that the pharmaceutical industry always says this is why they have to charge so much. It is true. But let me say one other thing that I think is a really important point, which is that having a drug that works for someone, but which is tremendously expensive, is a better problem than having no drug at all, right? And that’s, in cancer, often what we’re talking about. Once you have an expensive drug that works, that becomes an engineering challenge. How do you make that drug cheaper? How do you make another version of it? And we are much more successful tackling that problem than we are at developing totally new, out-of-the-box therapies."
This also explains why the US's high "cancer survival rates" don't mean its healthcare system is good
When talking about cancer screening, survival rates mislead - "survival rates actually tell us little about longer lifespans. In fact, research shows that, between 1950 and 1995, the increases in survival rates after cancer diagnosis weren’t associated with decreases in cancer death rates over the same period. What’s more, cancers that showed the largest increases in five-year survival didn’t have the largest decrease in deaths. Although five-year survival increased for all cancers over the study period, the death rate for some of them also actually increased. People whose cancer is detected by screening will show a higher survival rate than those who detect their cancer themselves or have it diagnosed by their doctor, even when screening has not prolonged any lives, because of two types of statistical bias. The first is known as lead time bias. This is where the detection of cancer through screening at an early stage does nothing but advance the date of diagnosis... The second statistical distortion results from what is known as length time bias. This is where the detection of cancer through screening picks up slowly growing cancers, which have a better prognosis than cancers presenting clinically (detected by the doctor or the person when they get ill). The extreme of this is over-diagnosis, where the cancer would never cause symptoms during that person’s lifetime, or death. Unfortunately, progressive and non-progressive cancer cells appear the same under the microscope – all are labelled as cancer"
So much for a common American defence of their healthcare system
One American's response to my quoting of this portion of this article by Katy Bell, Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health, University of Sydney, Alexandra Barratt, Professor of Public Health, University of Sydney, Andrew Hayen, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, UNSW Sydney was "you really think higher survival doesn't equate to longer lifespans? Clown." Amazing cope
50% Of Americans Now Carry Medical Debt, A New Chronic Condition For Millions - "Fully half of Americans now carry medical debt, up from 46% in 2020, according to new data from Debt.com, a consumer financial education company. More than half (57%) of Americans with medical debt owe at least $1,000, driven by diagnostic tests, hospitalizations, and emergency room visits, the survey showed."
I was told that US healthcare costs were not a problem even if you could not afford the high prices since there's Medicaid and/or charity and that otherwise, you can negotiate the bill and that "people are just stupid", and that "the issue is way overblown". Guess there're a lot of stupid people in the US. When I posted this article saying that Americans must be very stupid, the person pivoted and posted an article about credit card debt and said that Americans just live outside their means since they carry a lot of debt month to month in revolving accounts. Apparently you can negotiate down your credit card debt in the US too. What a wonderful country
Excess Administrative Costs Burden the U.S. Health Care System - "Each year, health care payers and providers in the United States spend about $496 billion on billing and insurance-related (BIR) costs, according to Center for American Progress estimates presented in this issue brief. As health care costs continue to rise, a logical starting point for potential savings is addressing waste. A 2010 report by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) estimated that the United States spends about twice as much as necessary on BIR costs... The administrative complexity of the U.S. system also burdens patients, whether they are deciphering bewildering bills or shuttling records between providers. Three-quarters of consumers report being confused by medical bills and explanations of benefits. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of people newly enrolled in the health insurance marketplace found that many were not confident in their understanding of the definitions of basic terms and concepts such as “premium,” “deductible,” or “provider network.”... Compared with Canada, the United States has 44 percent more administrative staff, and U.S. physicians dedicate about 50 percent more time on administrative tasks... Within the U.S. system, the share of expenditures that are attributable to administrative costs varies greatly by payer. The BIR costs for traditional Medicare and Medicaid hover around 2 percent to 5 percent, while those for private insurance is about 17 percent... OECD data also show that within a country, administrative costs are higher in private insurance than in government-run programs"
This former U.S. health insurance exec says he lied to Americans about Canadian health care - "Wendell Potter says the stark differences in how Canada and the U.S. are weathering the COVID-19 pandemic compelled him to speak out once more about the lies he says he peddled to Americans when he worked as a private insurance executive... We told the Americans that the Canadian system was not the system that we should have anything to do with, that it was "socialized medicine." We used that term repeatedly to try to get people to be afraid of the Canadian system. We exaggerated and misinformed people about waits. I'm very familiar with the waits that you have to, in many cases, have in Canada for elective procedures. But we wanted people to have the impression that if you have an emergency or if you have any need for medical care, that you were put on a long waiting list. And it's to try to make people think that Canadians don't like their health-care system and that doctors don't like it and that people are coming across the border in droves to get care in the U.S. So we tried to create that perception and to make people think that's really the way the Canadian system is."
Women gets $700 ER bill for spending 7 hours in waiting room, without treatment - "The woman says Emory Healthcare told her, ‘You get charged before you are seen. Not for being seen.’... Davis said this would probably prevent her from seeking medical attention in the future. “I’m very reluctant to go to the hospital now. That’s kind of like the last resort now. Seeing that they’re able to bill you for random things, it doesn’t make me want to go. So that’s not good”... One in five Americans who undergo elective surgery get hit with unexpected out-of-network medical bills, according to a 2020 study of almost 350,000 people. And those suffering sticker shock ended up owing $2,011 more than they were expecting, on average. And nearly one in five families who delivered babies in 2019 may have gotten at least one surprise bill for the delivery and/or newborn hospitalization, with an average bill of $744, another study estimates."
Damn government intervention!
How Government Regulations Made Healthcare So Expensive
What an awful intellectualtakeout article. It shows rising costs and then claims that these are all due to regulation, but many of the claims don't make sense or contradict how defenders of the US's healthcare system promote it. Just because there was regulation and healthcare costs rose doesn't mean the former caused the latter. That's the post-hoc, ergo propter-hoc fallacy
Apparently drug patents don't exist in other countries. Also, we are told that the US healthcare system is superior because the high prices go to paying for all the innovation. So ironically it seems government regulation makes the US's healthcare system better.
Ironically, since government regulation is supposed to be the root of all evil, shouldn't reducing regulation (e.g. the McCarran-Ferguson Act) be good?
Apparently having any sorts of standards for coverage inflates costs. But if your belief system holds that all government regulation is bad, it's easy to see how this is the case
It's strange how the Hospital Survey and Construction Act (which the article explicitly calls a subsidy) is claimed to have raised healthcare costs - subsidies lower costs
Employers have more bargaining power than individuals, So employers becoming dominant buyers should have reduced healthcare costs (in the aggregate)
Not to mention the bland assertions about partial nationalization through Medicare/Medicaid or blaming Obamacare
The Affordable Care Act Made Health Care (Slightly) More Affordable
Ironically one person claimed Obamacare increased healthcare costs since minimum premiums rose. I pointed out that if minimum premiums are the measure of healthcare costs, then there should be single payer since then no one will pay (directly) for medical care
Many get hit with surprise 'out-of-network' bill after emergency rooms: Study - "A new study that looked at more than 2 million emergency department visits found that more than 1 in 5 patients who went to ERs within their health-insurance networks ended up being treated by an “out-of-network” doctor — and thus exposed to additional charges not covered by their insurance plan... But the bills can be much higher than that, according to the researchers, who pointed out that one patient they were aware of faced a potential balance bill of more than $19,600. On average, out-of-network emergency department doctors were paid nearly 2.7-times what in-network doctors were paid for the same services... “Most patients with health coverage go to in-network emergency rooms and rightly expect to be treated by in-network doctors”... while hospitals generally contract with physician groups to provide care to patients who visit emergency rooms, the ER doctors, “however, contract independently with insurance companies.” “And they and the hospitals where they work may not contract with the same insurers”"
All these irresponsible people not checking if the hospital or even doctor is in their network before their heart attack!
People Are Using Ubers As Ambulances — And Drivers Hate It - "If Uber drivers were employees of Uber, then Uber would be liable if something bad happened to a passenger en route to the hospital. But because drivers are independent contractors, they could be held responsible for any failure to provide care during the business transaction"
Defenders of the US healthcare system claim prices are ridiculous only due to government intervention, of course
Patient satisfaction in VA medical centers and private sector hospitals: a comparison - "satisfaction with VA physicians, who are salaried and assigned to patients, is just as high as satisfaction with private physicians who are paid by fee and selected by the patient."
Of course nothing will convince all the Americans who keep crowing about how bad VA healthcare is
Waiting for Care in Veterans Affairs Health Care Facilities and Elsewhere - "the mean top box scores for access to urgent and routine care of 48.0% and 56.0% measured in the VA remain lower than comparable scores in the Medicare population from 2017 (71% urgent and 64% routine). Similar differences were observed for routine specialty care (54% vs 61%). The discordance between measured wait-time metrics and patient-perceived access may be due, in part, to continuing negative coverage of the VA in the press, as well as public proclamations that create unrealistic expectations (eg, universal access to same-day appointments) that may not have been fully met by increased capacity to deliver such timely care."
Independent Veteran advocate health care survey shows high marks for VA improvements - "The survey, which asked Veterans about their experience with VA health care since the MISSION Act was implemented, found that more than 80% were satisfied with their VA health care. Nearly 75% of Veteran respondents reported improvements at their local VA, and more than 90% would recommend VA care to fellow Veterans. The survey also revealed while most Veterans still prefer to receive care from the VA, Veterans using community care have fewer billing issues and a positive opinion of the MISSION Act urgent care benefits."
Satisfaction with VA and non-VA outpatient care among veterans - "Veterans Administration (VA)-only users were 2 to 8 times more satisfied with their outpatient care than were VA nonusers on 5 out of 10 satisfaction measures."
VA Health System Generally Delivers Higher-Quality Care Than Other Health Providers - "VA hospitals generally provided better quality care than non-VA hospitals and the VA's outpatient services were better quality when compared to commercial HMOs, Medicaid HMOs and Medicare HMOs"
Five myths about VA health care - The Washington Post - "In a 2013 survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that supports independent research on health-care issues, 1 in 4 Americans reported that they had to wait six or more days for an appointment with their primary-care physician, even when they were “sick or needed care.” Most major VA medical centers, by contrast, now offer same-day urgent primary-care and mental-health-care appointments. Current enrollees seeking nonurgent primary care can typically get an appointment in three to seven days... compared with the rest of the U.S. health-care system, VA’s performance is pretty impressive. As a Rand review of the literature concluded, study after study has found that the “quality of care delivered by VA is generally equal to or better than care delivered in the private sector.” This has been true since VA underwent a structural transformation in the mid-1990s. Since then, health-care researchers, as well as mainline veterans’ service organizations, have consistently hailed its pioneering use of electronic medical records , adherence to evidence-based medicine, patient safety measures, and high levels of care coordination and scientific research. The bipartisan Commission on Care , of which I was a member, found the quality of VA’s behavioral health programs “largely unrivalled.”"
Over half of Americans delay or don't get health care because of money - "54 percent of Americans say they’ve delayed care for themselves in the past year because of cost, and another 23 percent delayed care for more than a year for the same reason... A 2018 JPMorgan Chase & Co. study found a “dramatic link between health-care spending and tax refunds” citing that “consumers’ spending on health care was significantly affected by cash-flow dynamics” since they increased out-of-pocket spending by 60 percent in the week after getting a refund. Overall, about half of Americans, or 49 percent, say their health tends to take a back seat to other financial obligations"
More than 26 000 Americans die each year because of lack of health insurance - "More than 26 260 Americans aged 25 to 64 died in 2006 because they lacked health insurance—more than twice as many as were murdered, Families USA said. In the seven years from 2000 to 2006 an estimated 162 700 Americans died because of lack of health insurance."
Why Switzerland Has the World's Best Health Care System - "Government spending on health care in Switzerland is only 2.7 percent of GDP, by far the lowest in the developed world. By contrast, in 2008, U.S. government spending on health care was 7.4 percent of GDP. If the U.S. could move its state health spending to Swiss levels, it would save more than $700 billion a year.Despite this apparent stinginess, the Swiss have achieved universal coverage for all its citizens. The Swiss have access to the latest technology, just as Americans do, and with comparably low wait times for appointments and procedures. And the Swiss are among the healthiest people on earth: while life expectancy is not the ideal proxy for overall health, nor of a health care system’s performance, life expectancy for a Swiss citizen on his 65th birthday is second only to that of Japan’s... Swiss citizens buy insurance for themselves; there are no employer-sponsored or government-run insurance programs. Hence, insurance prices are transparent to the beneficiary. The government defines the minimum benefit package that qualifies for the mandate. Critically, all packages require beneficiaries to pick up a portion of the costs of their care (deductibles and coinsurance) in order to incentivize their frugality. The government subsidizes health care for the poor on a graduated basis, with the goal of preventing individuals from spending more than 10 percent of their income on insurance. But because people are still on the hook for a significant component of the costs, they often opt for cheaper packages... 99.5% of Swiss citizens have health insurance. Because they can choose between plans from nearly 100 different private insurance companies, insurers must compete on price and service, helping to curb health care inflation. Most beneficiaries have complete freedom to choose their doctor, and appointment waiting times are almost as low as those in the U.S., the world leader... The Swiss have an individual mandate... the fact that both liberals and conservatives would find objectionable elements to Switzerland is a large part of its appeal. It achieves the policy priorities of liberals (universal coverage; regulated insurance market) and of conservatives (low government health spending; privately-managed health care). Both sides could declare victory, and yet also have plenty to complain about."
The Doctor Will Zoom You Now (Ep. 423) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "In a typical year, the U.S. spends about 18 percent of its G.D.P., or $3.5 trillion, on health care. That’s nearly double the average O.E.C.D. country in terms of G.D.P. percentage; and our outcomes aren’t always so good. How might telehealth change this? The health-care economist David Cutler sees three main drivers of those high costs:
CUTLER: The first one is the administrative cost of running the health-care system. In most countries, they just say to the physicians, “Here are the resources that we have, you make do with them.” And that’s not a very expensive way to do things. In the U.S. we don’t say that. We say, “You can have whatever equipment you want, but we’re going to question every single time you want to use it.” The net effect is we spend an enormous amount of resources adjudicating when is it appropriate to use care or not. That’s very, very costly... The same provider of care — think about pharmaceutical companies — gets paid more for selling in the U.S. than in other countries. Drugs are more expensive in the U.S. than in other countries. So, by the way, are physician visits for the same thing, more expensive in the U.S. than other countries.
That’s connected to our byzantine system of insurance reimbursements, and the fact that many people get their health insurance through their employers, which doesn’t happen in other countries. And the third driver of high U.S. health-care costs?
CUTLER: The typical visit to a medical-care institution is more intensive in the U.S. than it is elsewhere. It’s likely to involve additional testing, maybe hospitalization. And a lot of that care is not really so essential. It’s done because the physician just wants to be sure, sometimes because he or she is afraid of being sued, sometimes because there’s an empty hospital bed, so you might as well use it...
KURTH: One of the brutal things I realized 15-plus years ago was that I worked for the patient and I can’t have myself — and this is maybe more than one needs to know — I’m not working for Kaiser, which I think is a wonderful nonprofit health company. I don’t work for Cigna, or I don’t work for Oxford or United, or I don’t work for a commercial insurance company. Yet they put rules on me that may not actually be in the best interest of my patient. And that’s a harsh thing to say. And when I work for the patient, it means you have my undivided attention."
Of course, anti-government Americans just blame government regulation for everything
Coronavirus is revealing how broken America’s economy really is - "When Susan Finley developed flu-like symptoms, she didn’t go to the doctor because she was frightened about the cost. Finley’s grandparents later found her dead in her apartment. She was 53.Finley did not die as a result of Covid-19. She died in 2016 as a result of America’s healthcare system – a system that led her to avoid treatment for the common flu in order to avoid debt. It is that same system that is currently creaking under the pressure of a pandemic that experts warned was coming but governments failed to prepare for. It is a system that does not qualify for the term “developed”... There are 2.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people in the United States. That’s fewer than Turkmenistan (7.4 beds per 1,000), Mongolia (7.0), Argentina (5.0) and Libya (3.7). In fact, the US ranks 69th out of 182 countries analyzed by the World Health Organization. This lack of hospital beds is forcing doctors across the country to ration care under Covid-19, pushing up the number of preventable deaths. America’s numbers are similarly unimpressive when it comes to medical doctors. The United States has 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people, placing it behind Trinidad & Tobago (2.7), and Russia (4.0 doctors per 1,000, for a country that is described as being “in transition”). Life expectancies at birth are lower in the US than they are in Chile or China. The US has a higher maternal mortality rate than Iran or Saudi Arabia. It’s not just health. Access to the internet is better in Bahrain and Brunei (two countries the UN does not consider developed economies) than it is in the US... In the United States, 83% of students graduate high school. That figure is higher in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Barbados, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro. None of those countries are considered “developed economies” by the United Nations."
I see Americans proclaiming there's no problem because no one is denied life saving treatment. Presumably bankruptcy is not an issue as long as you can still visit an emergency room. And you should have 'personal responsibility' and not get the flu by not interacting with people, even if you lose your job (and if you lose any medical coverage because of that...)
Strange how superior private healthcare means the US has fewer hosptial beds than Libya
A woman had a baby. Then her hospital charged her $39.35 to hold it. - "The image of the bill, now shared widely on Reddit, shows a charge for “skin to skin after c sec.” The Reddit user who posted it explained more in a few comments. He wasn’t exactly mad about the charge — he said the hospital did a great job delivering his son. Instead, it more of spoke to the absurdity of American health care... A labor and delivery nurse added a bit of context as to why this charge might show up on a bill — that it requires an additional nurse come in and watch the baby while it’s being held by the mother...
'It's significantly easier to find out how much it costs to park at a hospital than how much it will cost to get treatment.All of this results in a system where consumers are totally divorced from prices. This is dangerous because prices are a key ingredient to a healthy market. We rely on prices in every industry to communicate value and drive competition. A lack of transparency can lead to an artificial inflation of prices, making consumers pay more for treatment that is of no better quality.'"
Hospitals as Insurers of Last Resort - "American hospitals are required to provide emergency medical care to the uninsured. We use previously confidential hospital financial data to study the resulting uncompensated care, medical care for which no payment is received. We use both panel-data methods and case studies from state-wide Medicaid disenrollments and find that the uncompensated care costs of hospitals increase in response to the size of the uninsured population. The results suggest that each additional uninsured person costs local hospitals $900 each year in uncompensated care. Similarly, the closure of a nearby hospital increases the uncompensated care costs of remaining hospitals. Increases in the uninsured population also lower hospital profit margins, which suggests that hospitals cannot simply pass along all increased costs onto privately insured patients. For-profit hospitals are less affected by these factors, suggesting that non-profit hospitals serve a unique role as part of the social insurance system."
Someone has to pay, in the end
Who pays when someone without insurance shows up in the ER? - "The year the Affordable Care Act passed, hospitals provided about $40 billion in "uncompensated care" — that is, care they were not paid for. That was nearly 6% of their total 2010 expenses.A 1985 federal law requires emergency departments to stabilize and treat anyone entering their doors, regardless of their ability to pay... It... doesn’t mean that hospitals won’t try to bill someone without insurance. And the bill they send will be higher than for an insured patient because there’s no carrier to negotiate lower prices.As a result, the uninsured are more likely to be contacted by collection agencies, as they face problems paying both medical and non-medical bills. One study, published in 2016 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that someone who goes into the hospital without insurance doubles her chances of filing for bankruptcy over the next four years. For the bills that go unpaid, hospitals can try to compensate by charging other patients more. But that doesn’t happen as much as many people – including policymakers -- think... Studying the effects of expanding Medicaid in Michigan – where more than 600,000 gained coverage – researchers at the University of Michigan have found no evidence that the expansion affected insurance premiums. They did, however, document that hospitals’ uncompensated care costs dropped dramatically – by nearly 50%.Conversely, when Tennessee and Missouri had large-scale Medicaid cuts in 2005, the amount of care hospitals provided for free suddenly increased. In a 2015 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Garthwaite and his co-authors estimated every uninsured person costs local hospitals $900 in uncompensated care costs each year.“This is not a trivial thing for a hospital to deal with,” Garthwaite said. While hospitals average 7% profit margins, uncompensated care costs can be more than 5% of revenue.Hospitals do get help with the unpaid bills – from taxpayers."
Hospitals are paid twice as much (or more) by private insurers than Medicare, study finds - "Employer-sponsored private health plans in 2017 paid more than double the amount Medicare paid for identical health care services
Some guy claimed that the US moving to single payer would drive up costs because private companies would charge whatever they wanted
Medical Tourists: Incoming and Outgoing - "In 2017, more than 1.4 million Americans sought health care in a variety of countries around the world... Because we have the most expensive health care system in the world, it is not difficult to find countries that offer various procedures at 30%-65% of the cost of care in the United States. Other countries can charge less because of lower pay to physicians and other health care workers,much less overhead because patients pay cash, and subtraction of the substantial cost of malpractice insurance"
Trump’s claim about Canadians traveling to the United States for medical care - The Washington Post - "Of the 18,000 respondents to the 1996 Canadian National Population Health Survey, 90 people said they had received health care in the United States in the previous 12 months. Only 20 respondents said they traveled to the United States specifically to get that care. The Trump campaign cited research from the right-leaning Canadian think tank Fraser Institute, which found that in 2014, more than 52,513 Canadians received non-emergency medical treatment outside of Canada... While it is true that there are longer wait times in Canada for such procedures, there is no reliable, official data on the number of people traveling from Canada to the United States, said Victor Rodwin, health policy and management professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service.“What we do know is that the numbers of people who come from Canada to the United States for surgery are very small”"
American logic: 70,000 (even assuming you take that high number) Canadians (0.19% of the population) travelling to the US shows that Canadian healthcare sucks and the American healthcare is superior. But 1.4 million Americans (0.43% of the population) going overseas for healthcare doesn't mean anything
Meme - "No other country in the developed world has "for-profit" health insurance. And you know what, that's why they have lower healthcare costs than we do. Their people aren't burdened with the cost of supporting billionaire health insurance executives and the millionaires who work for them. -Dr. Thom Hartmann"
This is patently untrue - many developed countries have for-profit insurance. Also his doctorate is honorary
