Healthcare Revisited – Hospital Costs

(source: https://worldofdtcmarketing.com/hospital-care-is-the-largest-driver-of-u-s-health-prices/)

“Total health care spending in America was approximately $3.5-trillion in 2017, and about 32% of that amount — or $1.1-trillion — is spent on hospital services.”

Hospitals are an area where our costs are completely out of whack! I have no idea why we are so out of line with the other countries.

There are numerous documented examples of hospital financial abuse in this country. Overcharges for OTC medications, overprescribed testing, and phantom charges are among these examples. In the U.S. we pay more for hospital services than in all other countries. Do we receive superior care in exchange? Considering where we rank in terms of quality of care, it is doubtful.

This area cries out for some serious baselining. I have not been able to locate the cost of a hospital day for all of the baseline countries. But there is little doubt that they all have a lower per day cost than the U.S.

I am reprinting this chart to illustrate the issue. It contains the numbers for a couple of baseline countries, France and Spain.