It really is, and has nothing to do with the current state of Medicare and what it covers. Our per-capita government health care expenditures are far higher than systems that both have better outcomes and that also don't charge at the point of delivery.
Our doctors make twice as much as everyone else's doctors, and that is only sustained because they are both protected from competition from foreign doctors, and also restrict supply domestically. Our drugs are 10x the prices paid in other countries. Our broken patent system contributes to massively bloated prices in medical devices.
We wouldn't have a government budget deficit if our system was as efficient as any other system in the developed world. The saddest thing is that in after our government spends more than everyone else, we as individuals then go out of pocket even more, and the majority of our bankruptcies and foreclosures are a result of medical difficulties. I would go on, but all of this is as boring and obvious as it is ultimately unsustainable.
The statistics on medically-related bankruptcy are usually flawed, and overstate the extent of this problem. They usually assume that if you owed more than $(small amount) in healthcare debt, (exact amount varies by study,) the bankruptcy was caused by this debt. Some of the better studies use healthcare debt as % of total debt accumulated in year(s) before bankruptcy, and come out with much lower figures.[1]
It makes sense that if you owe a lot of money, some of it would be to a sector which makes up a large part of the economy, and an even larger part of consumer spending. To put it another way, if you measured the impact of car debt the same way that most studies measure the impact of healthcare debt, you would see that cars cause many, if not most bankruptcies (which is an absurd result, as most people can easily liquidate a car and move to a lower cost option).
[1] will get a citation when I have a little more time
Your drugs are expensive because the rest of the world freeloads by artificially restricting the selling price of drugs, leaving the US to bear the brunt of the R&D costs.
Your FDA and legal system pushes up the price of medical devices.
But yes, you have the most unnecessarily complex and convoluted health care administrative structure known to man.
Often times there are very good reasons for those restrictions, especially when pricing for a drug deviates dramatically from actual R&D / operations costs. Take the case of orphan drugs:
Besides runaway pricing, many drugs for which companies are given patents and sole-distribution rights, have already been on the market for decades, just never with proper FDA approval. There are other tax incentives and grants provided as well for reintroducing "new" drugs that were already on the market.
It really is, and has nothing to do with the current state of Medicare and what it covers. Our per-capita government health care expenditures are far higher than systems that both have better outcomes and that also don't charge at the point of delivery.
Our doctors make twice as much as everyone else's doctors, and that is only sustained because they are both protected from competition from foreign doctors, and also restrict supply domestically. Our drugs are 10x the prices paid in other countries. Our broken patent system contributes to massively bloated prices in medical devices.
We wouldn't have a government budget deficit if our system was as efficient as any other system in the developed world. The saddest thing is that in after our government spends more than everyone else, we as individuals then go out of pocket even more, and the majority of our bankruptcies and foreclosures are a result of medical difficulties. I would go on, but all of this is as boring and obvious as it is ultimately unsustainable.
http://www.cepr.net/calculators/hc/hc-calculator.html
edit: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/fixing-our-fis...