The big driver to changing the healthcare system in the U.S. was the inexorable rise in healthcare costs. These costs kept rising for a number of reasons, which we look at at in this episode.
Comment #1 posted on 2017-09-28 18:07:32 by b-yeezi
Impressive
Thank you for this episode. Once again, I am impressed by your knowledge of the healthcare system in the US, and love to hear your apolitical description.
Comment #2 posted on 2017-09-29 10:18:12 by Bob
More information
I am hope you can address some of the points brought up in "Adam Ruins Everything - The Real Reason Hospitals Are So Expensive" in a future episode. The video seems to challenge your arguments related to why health care is so expensive in the US. Their video and sources are here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDOQpfaUc8
https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/blog/adams-sources/adam-ruins-the-hospital.html
I would also argue that it is possible to decrease the individual cost of equipment by increasing it's utilization. For example it common practice in European hospitals to run expensive equipment like MRI machines 24/7 to reduce the overall cost.
It is also possible to increase human utilization by concentrating skills in facilities dedicated to a given specialism. This is been done to great efficiency in India and there are facilities dedicated to, for example eye surgery, or heart treatments. This has proven to be extremely useful in attracting the best specialists from all over the world, because they are guaranteed to have a high throughput of patients in their dedicated field. This allows the facilities to train up many more specialists as there is a constant utilization of their skills.
Comment #3 posted on 2017-10-05 23:59:49 by Kevin O'Brien
Reply to b-yeezi
Thank you for the kind comment. I happen to have very strong opinions on what should be done, but in this series my primary goal was to be objective, and you are relieving me that I may have succeeded.
Comment #4 posted on 2017-10-06 00:06:09 by Kevin O'Brien
Reply to Bob
Adam Ruins Everything is very entertaining, but not exactly complete in its analysis. So this comes across to me like cherry-picking the data. hospitals do indeed have chargemasters, and the prices therein are largely made up. But it is also true that margins at most hospitals are rather thin, so I think it is not accurate to imply that hospitals are simply being greedy and waving around large bags of money. So I think Adam is essentially confusing cause and effect here.
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