Those care rankings are bogus because they look at cost as a factor and never take into account culture or genetics. The USA is ranked #1 in customer satisfaction. #1. What's broken is the government provided care and the type of insurance we buy. Medicare/caid, SCHIP and the like give away services for little cost and drive up demand while preventing providers from recovering their costs and forcing them to pass on costs to those that have private insurance.
In fact, the biggest waste in the US is the over purchase of insurance. Most people (or their employers) pay for visits to the doctor that they never use. If this country were to eliminate full coverage plans for high deductible plans, we'd save in the neighborhood $700 billion in a year. That's nearly half of all health care expenses. That'd make the US the cheapest country in the world for health care. But, let's not muddy the water with facts right?
Here's why I used to do:
$95/ month for three people
$5,000 ded
100% coverage after ded met
$10 million year/life limit
Yes, we paid $75 per doctor's visit. Once a year for me, 4-5 times a year for the little lady and 8 visits for the new born. So we paid, in a year, $1050 in out of pocket and $1140 for the plan for a grand total of $2190. The most we could have paid in a year was $6140. Oh, and we had a tiered Rx plan that was included and part of the ded. If we purchased a full blown plan, the premium alone was $5400 and still had a $3000 ded, so we could go over $8400 in a year with the "better" plan...and the lifetime max was lower, like $3-5 million.
The whole problem with our system is government involvement and this stupid idea that anything more than a $20 copay will cost us more.
