Why so expensive?

Ara’s blog brought up some interesting ideas on ageing populations and advances in medical technology as reasons for the rising cost of health care. Yet, I am skeptical about this because if we take Japan as an example, it has the largest burden of elderly people in the world and is amongst the top in medical technology, but their health care costs are not nearly as high as that of the U.S.

Yahaira’s comments on the lack of transparency in the U.S. health care system were interesting because I think a lot of things go on behind the scenes between insurance companies, providers and even the government that most of us do not get to see or understand. I am still new to the workings of the U.S. health care system, but in my mind if we are paying a disproportionally higher amount for health care than we should be (looking at the trends in the economy) and we are not seeing an equivalent improvement in the quality of service we receive, then somebody must be getting the benefit along the way. The most obvious answer to me is the giant, powerful, rich insurance companies that we see around us every day.

Listening to Dr. Stevens describe the U.S health care system last week was eye opening and mind boggling to say the least. It was almost impossible to make sense of all of the components within the system and the hundreds of exceptions and qualifications needed to receive treatment. In the end, it just demonstrated to me how inefficient and unnecessarily complicated the whole system is….all so that a few players along the way can collect all the money in this big game. If the health care system was truly for the purpose of providing health, I am confident that it would look a lot simpler and would definitely cost us less.