Healthcare Hysteria: Are we really in good hands?



Introduction

The healthcare system in the United States sucks. There are countless examples posted online about horror stories involving bills, inadequate care, or malpractice. In fact, according to David Blumenthal et al., it is “in a class by itself in the underperformance of its health care sector” when compared with Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Based on many different (about 70) performance indicators, the United States is often the highest spender on healthcare, with the lowest quality of the care itself according to this same study. Not only this, but in the cancer industry alone over $200 billion dollars were spent on care and treatment according to a study conducted by the National Cancer Institute. Statistics aside, I am sure that many of you reading this have had poor experiences with the healthcare system ranging from insurance to the care itself. So, this begs the question: Why, if we spend so much money, does our system suck?


Quality of Care

To address the quality of the care received in the United States healthcare system, we can look at mortality rates and lifespan of the countries that were analyzed. The U.S. not only has a lifespan that is “four years below the 10-country average”, but also the “highest rates of preventable and treatable deaths for all ages” (Mirror, Mirror 2024). This obviously reflects poorly on the quality of our healthcare system if other countries that spend much less money on healthcare are out-performing us where it matters. This study also discusses and compares the COVID-19 pandemic responses of these countries, but I believe that to be a failure of the government and society more than a failure of our healthcare system, so I do not think it is relevant to discuss here.


Administrative Healthcare

It goes almost without saying that access to healthcare is a critical piece of the healthcare system. In the United States, a “near majority” of people get healthcare access through their employer (Mirror, Mirror 2024). Additionally, due to the cost of healthcare, we see high deductible insurance plans where the insured will not have help with costs until after the deductible is met. For someone healthy like me, this means that I will have to pay for my medical nearly 100% out of pocket should something be wrong with me. One final point for healthcare access is that due to a shortage of primary care physicians, many patients in the U.S. are likely to not have a regular doctor. I know that from personal experience, I moved around doctors quite frequently for a while.

It is not only patients that have trouble dealing with insurance companies. Given how fragmented our insurance system is here, there are thousands of plans each with their own requirements, restrictions, and stipulations. These insurance companies providing the plans not only specify what will be covered or how much will be covered, but will also dispute costs with the hospitals, doctors, or nurses. It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to deal with these companies and their disputes, and in some cases the outright “denial of services” require appeals by the doctors--preventing treatment or care for the patient in the meantime Mirror, Mirror 2024).


Answering the Question

According to David Blumenthal et al., the best performing countries provide health insurance to all their residents which “provides access to care that prevents avoidable deaths” which is one of the reasons that the mortality rates in these countries are so high. Coverage in the U.S. isn’t all that great, and high deductible insurance plans deter insured people from getting the help they need. Some countries cap medical spending at a percentage of income or even a fixed cost. With this in mind, I believe I can provide an answer to the question I posed earlier. I believe that healthcare in the United States sucks because of the bureaucracy of insurance companies, the privatization of healthcare coverage, and the amount of spending that an American has to do in order to receive adequate treatment.



References

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2024/sep/mirror-mirror-2024?check_logged_in=1


https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/economic_burden


https://hbr.org/2024/11/why-the-u-s-healthcare-system-is-so-much-worse-than-its-peers


https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/the-cancer-industry-hype-versus-reality

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