The Cost of Health Care
Countries: United States, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Switzerland, Japan, Germany
“Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem,” according to the National Coalition on Health Care.
The United States spends the most in the world on health care – about $2 trillion annually. Yet, the U.S. ranks 37th in world in terms of the quality and fairness of its health care, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The U.S. has no comprehensive national health insurance system. Those who have insurance get it through their employers, government programs, or private suppliers. However,there are 47 million people that are not insured. Furthermore, millions more are underinsured, which has led to a growing epidemic of medical debt and bankruptcy in the United States. A Harvard University report found that about 50 percent of all bankruptcy fillings were partially due medical debt.
In light of this growing problem, correspondent T.R. Reid traveled with Frontline to investigate if other free-market countries were having the same problems with medical-related bankruptcy. What he found was shocking.
Traveling to the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland, Reid found that health-related bankruptcy is almost unheard of in these countries. Unlike the United States, all five of the visited countries have universal health care and pay a lot less.
Switzerland spends the second-highest amount on health care, but the government still spends 44-percent less per capita than the United States.
The full program, "Sick Around the World," is available online, along with a list of resources and a Q&A with Reid.
All the countries have varying degrees of private, market-based health care, like the United States. They, however, also limit the level of freedom the health care market can have. According to Frontline:
First, insurance companies must accept everyone and can't make a profit on basic care. Second, everybody's mandated to buy insurance, and the government pays the premium for the poor. Third, doctors and hospitals have to accept one standard set of fixed prices.
It's unnecessary for health care costs to send hundreds of thousands of Americans into debt each year. As Reid has learned, it is possible to make health care universal and affordable in a free-market economy.
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Health Care and the U.S. Presidential Elections
Now that you have a better understanding of how health care systems can work in a free-market economy, maybe, you want to know how the U.S. presidential candidates' health care proposals compare. Go to the Commonwealth Fund's website for a great analysis of the different proposals.
Rising Health Care Costs
A recent article in Business Week points to the use of high-tech treatments as another reason why U.S. health care costs are so high.
The U.S. Flunks Healthcare, Again!
In their recent report on healthcare, the Commonwealth fund ranked the U.S. two points lower than in 2006. Among other problems cited in the report, "Americans [are] waiting longer to see doctors and more likely to die of preventable or treatable illnesses than people in other industrialized countries."
Would you marry or divorce for health insurance?
More couples are choosing to marry, and in in some cases even divorce, for medical coverage. And some are prolonging unhappy marriages to avoid going without coverage.
The life-changing influence of health care on marriages is more common than you might think. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that "7 percent of adults said someone in their household had married in the past year to gain access to insurance." As one woman weighing divorce to be enrolled in a low-income health insurance program told the New York Times, “What happened to our country? I don’t remember growing up like this.”
marry are divorce for health insurance
Dear sir
divorce or marry is not solution of health insurance.before marry we should stable in economic and financially then go ahead for marry as a result u are able to survive in the world also secure your future
thank you
SHEEN
The truth is that the people
The truth is that the people will do what they can for good healthcare coverage. Unfortunatley, that is what the world has come to and even worse now in a time of economic instability. I recently read an article in BusinessWeek that discussed the "doughnut hole" in Medicare coverage and what some seniors are doing to cut cost. The article discussed how seniors are going without critical medication because they cannot afford the medications in addition to watching their retirment dwindle away.
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