U.S. Health Care Costs Lead the World (Surprise) September 14, 2009
Posted by Charles Bosdet in Government health care, Health care results, Health care statistics, OECD, Statistics, United States.Tags: comparison, Government health care, Health care, healthcare, OECD, Statistics, United States
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Newscientist.com explores some data supporting the need for U.S. health care reform. (To see the “video below” to which the narrator refers, click here to go to Newscientist.com.)
Note that U.S. health care costs were in the same range as OECD countries until 1980, after which they began to rise faster than in the other countries.
In India, an American Experiences Highs and Lows of a Free-Market Health Care Patchwork September 7, 2009
Posted by Charles Bosdet in Comparisons, Health care, India.Tags: comparison, Health care, healthcare, India, United States
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Aruna Viswanatha moved from New York to New Delhi for a newspaper job. Within two weeks she embarked on a half-expected but involuntary introduction to India’s health care system. Some things she anticipated, but others …
What I hadn’t anticipated was that India’s treatment would turn out to be so good. And cheap. Unless you happen to be one of the hundreds of millions of Indians who are poor and don’t live in a major metropolitan area. The Indian healthcare system is an anarchic hodgepodge, with little insurance, little regulation and a range of services offered by hundreds of government-run, trust-run and corporate hospitals. The care it produced for me was fast, effective, courteous and cheaper than American medicine, even when adjusted for the lower cost of living. But that was the care it produced for me, a middle-class woman in the big city. As America considers healthcare reform, the Indian system is a testament to both the triumphs and the pitfalls of letting the free market heal people.
See her article, “How I got well in India for $50; My cheap, fast and effective treatment in New Delhi reminded me of everything wrong with American healthcare” at Salon.com.
