US Healthcare System in Crisis: Spends Doubly More Than Peer Countries, but Falling Behind in Life Expectancy—People Increasingly Hard-Pressed to Pay Medical Bills — Jon Hellevig

More an article than a post. Longish and detailed.

Awara
US Healthcare System in Crisis: Spends Doubly More Than Peer Countries, but Falling Behind in Life Expectancy—People Increasingly Hard-Pressed to Pay Medical Bills

Jon Hellevig

Oliver Milman — More than half US population lives amid dangerous air pollution, report warns

Not just climate change. I changed my place of residence, previously large cities, in 1973, something I would not have done otherwise. Never looked back. I did some short stints in cities since, working on projects, fortunately never in stinkpots.

The Guardian
More than half US population lives amid dangerous air pollution, report warns
Oliver Milman

HBR — The Big Barrier to High-Value Health Care: Destructive Self-Interest

One of the best-kept secrets in the United States is that workers pay almost all of the costs of their health care. They do so through employee contributions to premiums, out-of-pocket payments for services, a shift of compensation dollars from wages to benefits, and state and federal taxes such as the payroll tax that supports Medicare.

But instead of serving workers’ best interests by trying to give them the best care at the lowest cost, insurers, providers, employers, and unions act like adversaries. Insurers leverage their purchasing power to exact discounts from providers and their administrative power to reduce benefits. Dominant providers leverage their market position to raise prices independently of cost or quality. Employers leverage their power in labor markets where workers have limited job options to extract higher deductibles and out-of-pocket payments from employees. Unions, which now represent a tiny share of American workers, resist to the extent they can.

The numbers spell out the sorry result. On average, family premiums and out-of-pocket costs are about 40% of median household income (and even more if the payroll tax for Medicare is included). Meanwhile, health care outcomes for the population as a whole are improving at a rate far slower than premiums are increasing. This continuing transfer from wages to health care does not reflect better value for money.

To get on to the pathway to lower total costs with better outcomes like the parties involved in the mid-Atlantic region are trying to do, players in other regions must understand that they are in acommon system with a common pool of limited resources and that separate, zero-sum strategies are destructive. With that in mind, they must seek four changes.

Harvard Business Review — HBR Blog Network
The Big Barrier to High-Value Health Care: Destructive Self-Interest
Lindsay A. Martin, Donald Berwick and Thomas Nolan

Stuart Kaufman — Associate director at Centers for Disease Control: We’ve reached ‘the end of antibiotics, period’ (via Raw Story )

Associate director at Centers for Disease Control: We’ve reached ‘the end of antibiotics, period’ (via Raw Story )

In an interview that aired on PBS’s Frontline, an associate director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Arjun Srinivasan, said that “for a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about…

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Vijay Govindarajan and Ravi Ramamurti — India’s Secret to Low-Cost Health Care

A renowned Indian heart surgeon is currently building a 2,000-bed, internationally accredited“health city” in the Cayman Islands, a short flight from the U.S. Its services will include tertiary care procedures, such as open-heart surgery, angioplasty, knee or hip replacement, and neurosurgery for about 40% of U.S. prices. Patients will have the option of recuperating for a week or two in the Caymans before returning to the U.S.

At a time when health care costs in the United States threaten to bankrupt the federal government, U.S. hospitals would do well to take a leaf or two from the book of Indian doctors and hospitals that are treating problems of the eye, heart, and kidney all the way to maternity care, orthopedics, and cancer for less than 5% to 10% of U.S. costs by using practices commonly associated with mass production and lean production.

Harvard Business Review — HBR Blog Network (Free registration required)
India’s Secret to Low-Cost Health Care
Vijay Govindarajan and Ravi Ramamurti

Katy Hall and Jan Diehm — Why U.S. Health Care Is Obscenely Expensive, In 12 Charts

...everything just costs a whole lot

The Huffington Post
Why U.S. Health Care Is Obscenely Expensive, In 12 Charts

Katy Hall and Jan Diehm

High inefficiency and low effectiveness = bad policy and poor management.

Rick Ungar — Unexpected Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium Rates

Premiums come in lower than expected.

Forbes
Unexpected Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium Rates
Rick Ungar

Jeff Spross — Bombshell IMF Study: United States Is World’s Number One Fossil Fuel Subsidizer

Between directly lowered prices, tax breaks, and the failure to properly price carbon, the world subsidized fossil fuel use by over $1.9 trillion in 2011 — or eight percent of global government revenues — according to a study released this week by the International Monetary Fund.

The biggest offender was by far the United States, clocking in at $502 billion. China came in second at $279 billion, and Russia was third at $116 billion. In fact, the problem is so significant in the U.S. that the IMF figures correcting it will require new fees, levies, or taxes totaling over $500 billion a year, or more than 3 percent of the economy.

Climate Progress
Bombshell IMF Study: United States Is World’s Number One Fossil Fuel Subsidizer
Jeff Spross

As Warren Mosler says, a subsidy is a negative tax. Now we learn that it is necessary not only to eliminate the subsidies but to increase taxes and regulation (which increases costs) in order to save the home planet.

But developing an inexpensive, renewable, clean source of transportable energy is of the highest priority to avoid severe culling of the species.