{"id":54561,"date":"2013-03-29T11:33:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T16:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=54561"},"modified":"2013-03-26T22:42:59","modified_gmt":"2013-03-27T03:42:59","slug":"health-care-costs-greed-and-socialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/03\/29\/health-care-costs-greed-and-socialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Care Costs, Greed, and “Socialism”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0has provided some data on medical costs across a selection of countries (Argentina, Canada, Chile, and India in grey; France, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain in blue; and the U.S. in red). The data reveal that American health care is very expensive compared to other countries.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No wonder the US spends twice as much as France on health care.\u00a0 In 2009, the U.S. average was $8000 per person; in France, $4000.\u00a0 (Canada came in at $4800).\u00a0 Why do we spend so much?\u00a0 Ezra Klein quotes<\/a>\u00a0the title of a 2003 paper by four health-care economists:\u00a0 \u201cit\u2019s the prices, stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

And why are US prices higher?\u00a0 Prices in the other OECD countries are lower partly because of what U.S. conservatives would call socialism \u2013 the active participation of the government.\u00a0 In the U.K. and Canada, the government sets prices.\u00a0 In other countries, the government uses its Wal-Mart-like power as a huge buyer to negotiate lower prices from providers.\u00a0 (If it\u2019s a good thing for Wal-Mart to bring lower prices for people who need to buy clothes, why is it a bad thing for the government to bring lower prices to people who need to buy, say, an appendectomy? I could never figure that out.)<\/p>\n

There may also be cultural differences between the U.S. and other wealthy countries, differences about whether greed, for lack of a better word, is good.\u00a0 How much greed is good, and in what realms is it good?\u00a0 Klein quotes a man who served in the Thatcher government:<\/p>\n

Health is a business in the United States in quite a different way than it is elsewhere.\u00a0 It\u2019s very much something people make money out of. There isn\u2019t too much embarrassment about that compared to Europe and elsewhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So we Americans roll along, paying several times what others pay for medical procedures, doctor visits, and drugs.<\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. The Washington Post\u00a0has provided some data on medical costs across a selection of countries (Argentina, Canada, Chile, and India in grey; France, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain in blue; and the U.S. in red). The data reveal that American health care is very expensive compared to other countries. No wonder the US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2083,36,98,2126,252,260,1764,1770,1771,1776,1777,1784,1802,1805,3920,85],"class_list":["post-54561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortionreproduction","tag-economics","tag-capitalism","tag-communismsocialism","tag-healthmedicine","tag-international-comparisons","tag-nation-argentina","tag-nation-canada","tag-nation-chile","tag-nation-france","tag-nation-germany","tag-nation-india","tag-nation-spain","tag-nation-switzerland","tag-nation-united-states","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54565,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54561\/revisions\/54565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}