Comments on: US Healthcare: no Bang for the Buck

By: bcolbath42

bcolbath42 — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:59:24 +0000

That our healthcare costs are a greater percentage of GDP is a meaningless comparison unless the relative GDPs are also factored in. If Europe’s GDPs are growing faster than ours, it would follow, all other things being equal, that our health care vs. GDP would be higher.

Also, I wonder what the life expectancy breakdowns are for the other countries in that comparison. Less advanced drugs are available in many of those countries; less sophisticated doctors are there. We have several friends who expatriated to Europe only to return as they aged.

When we were in Dublin a few years ago, Carol had a severe bout of hives after an allergic reaction to a drug she was prescribed here. The main hospital in Dublin told us there was a 24 hr backlog in the emergency room. I seriously doubt that would occur here.

I continue to be a critic of those who carp about high drug prices. When you look at the advances being made here in biopharma, it’s hard to believe that such research would be undertaken if there was no ROI potential on the back end. Almost every such project has pharma backing at some point; this would disappear if a profit potential was not there. This is also a shortcoming with single payer programs that no one even discusses. Insert the state as the payer, with no profit incentive, will result in a marked decrease in research and development.

Bruce Colbath 25 Sutton Place South; Apt. 17H New York, NY 10022 212-308-6080 (H) 917-902-0555 (Mobile)

5 Long Woods Lane East Hampton, NY 11937 631-324-8633

On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 6:36 PM, Resist and Replace wrote:

> D. Posnett MD posted: ” Health care in the US is more expensive, by far, > than anywhere else on this planet. It represents greater than 17.9% of the > US GDP. Health spending is projected to grow 1.0 percentage point faster > than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year over the 2″ >

By: D. Posnett MD

D. Posnett MD — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:59:24 +0000

It is not about anecdotes from Dublin! It’s about statistical averages. US healthcare is great for the wealthiest quintile as discussed, and as shown in the last graph where health care spending continues to rise for this group.

Here is another good article (from 2015) which starts off like this:
“Thirty-five years ago, the United States ranked 13th among the 34 industrialized nations that are today in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of life expectancy for newborn girls. These days, it ranks 29th.
In 1980, the infant mortality rate in the United States was about the same as in Germany. Today, American babies die at almost twice the rate of German babies.”

Every comparative study I have ever seen on this topic normalizes health care costs per GDP.

By: D. Posnett MD

D. Posnett MD — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:59:24 +0000

Regarding Bruce’s concerns about normalizing to GDP, I found the following:
https://epianalysis.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/usversuseurope/
“Does higher income necessarily result in greater healthcare spending? Actually, the U.S. seems to be an outlier from the overall curve between GDP and healthcare spending per capita. While most countries do spend more when they have more money, the U.S. disproportionately spends more, by about $3,000 per head.”

By: bcolbath42

bcolbath42 — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:59:24 +0000

Regarding the mortality rate, no mention is made about the lack of abortion services to the needy because of the GOP’s refusal to give women the choice in many jurisdictions, even when the baby’s life is at stake. Compounding that sin, the states (and the federal government) that mandate birth over abortion then refuse to provide the new single mother family the means by which they can reasonably sustain an existence. This leads to higher social costs, higher medical expense at the ER level and higher mortality rates for both mother and child. It’s really easy to toss numbers around in the abstract; it’s far more meaningful to analyze the numbers within the societal norms that impact them.