Wednesday, August 26, 2009

T.R. Reid's 'The Healing of America' (excerpt)

Health Expenditure as a percentage of GDP, 2005

USA 15.3

Switzerland 11.6

France 11.1

Germany 10.7

Canada 9.8

Sweden 9.1

UK 8.3

Japan 8.0

Mexico 6.4

Taiwan 6.2

Sources: OECD Health at a Glance, 2007; Government of Taiwan.

There's nothing particularly wrong with spending a lot of money on something important, as long as you get a decent return for what you spend. It's certainly not wasteful to spend money for effective medical treatment. If a dentist who was about to drill a tooth offered her patient a choice between listening to pleasant music for free to lessen the pain, or a shot of Novocain for $50, most people would pay for the shot and would probably get their money's worth. And there's nothing wrong with paying more for better performance. Those fifty-two-inch high-definition plasma televisions that people hang on the family room wall these days cost five times what a top-of-the-line set would have cost ten years ago, but buyers are willing to shell out the extra money because the enhanced viewing quality is worth the price.

When it comes to medical care, though, Americans are shelling out the big bucks without getting what we pay for. As we'll see shortly, the quality of medical care that Americans buy is often inferior to the treatment people get in other countries. And patients know it. Surveys show that Americans who see a doctor tend to be less satisfied with their treatment than Britons, Italians, Germans, Canadians, or the Japanese even though we pay the doctor much more than they do.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8383452