But the real problem is that our prices are vastly inflated over what they can and should be. In a report comparing U.S. health spending with that in other developed countries, the Congressional Research Service showed that for virtually every medical service or product, Americans pay more. The same coronary bypass operation, abdominal aneurysm repair, or hip surgery will cost twice as much in the United States as in Canada. Americans pay the highest prices in the world for pharmaceuticals, averaging $878 per person per year versus $461 in Europe. That is a big reason that America spends more than 16 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, compared with Europe's average of 9 percent. There is a lot of room for lowering prices.
[One big problem: The true prices charged are often a secret.]
America's prosperity and rising GDP have enabled us to ignore the cost of health benefitsmostly obscured in pay stubs.
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COMMENTS
Medical prices are vastly out of line
I can't believe anyone would suggest that our medical cost are "not out of line". What planet do you live on!? The charges for drugs and even many medical services are criminally high and excessive (far beyond the cost of production). The pharmaceutical industry has a strangle hold on the way medical professionals are schooled and trained and the whole system is geared, not for healing and health, but greed. Like the legal profession, the medical profession deserves the utter disdain of the American public. Sure, I have 'friends' in both professions whom I know to have integrity; but it is they who inform me of their shame. Wake up America. You have been duped and sold out. Wake up!
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