Our Health Care Prices Are 'Ludicrous'
Wonkblog's Ezra Klein published 21 charts yesterday from the International Federation of Health Plans that illustrate just how ridiculous our health care prices are in the United States.
Klein writes:
This is the fundamental fact of American health care: We pay much, much more than other countries do for the exact same things. For a detailed explanation of why, see this article. But this post isn’t about the why. It’s about the prices and the graphs.
The charts show prices in the United States as a range. This is because, Klein notes, in other countries, "prices are set centrally and most everyone, no matter their region or insurance arrangement, pays pretty close to the same amount." Not so in the United States. For example, in 2012, the total physician and hospital cost of an angioplasty in the United States ranged anywhere from $16,533 to $61,649. The second highest to the United States was the United Kingdom at $14,366.
Read more about health care costs on the AFL-CIO Now blog:
