Name: The real reason American health care is so expensive
Uploaded: 2018-03-09T15:34:04.000Z
Duration: 5 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - A2

I cannot tell you how obsessed I am with this chart.

It shows exactly what is wrong with America's

On one level, you've seen this chart before.

There's Germany and France and Japan and Canada

But now I want to add something you haven't

This is how much of that spending in each country

America's government spending on health care

on programs like Medicaid and Medicare and the VA -

It's about the same size as these other countries.

These countries where the government runs

It's the private insurance system that makes

Conventional wisdom says that the government is

"It can't say no. It's corrupt, it's inefficient, it's slow."

That is what we hear in America all the time.

And yet here we are with the biggest
 private sector spending the most.

If you look at the data on physician visits

and hospital discharges, you can get rid of one theory.

We don't go to the doctor more than the Germans

or the Japanese. In fact we go to the doctor less.

Every time we go to the doctor for everything

In America, the price for the same procedure

at the same hospital, it varies enormously

The price for someone with public insurance

like Medicare or Medicaid is often the lowest price.

that the government can demand lower
 prices from hospitals and doctors

But there are hundreds of private insurance companies

And they each cover far fewer people than

and hospitals and doctors are on their own.

And if you're uninsured, you have even less leverage.

One study found that most hospitals charge uninsured

as much as Medicare patients for an ER visit.

Other countries, they don't have this problem.

Instead of every private insurance company

negotiating with every healthcare provider.

The country, the central government, they go

and they say, "If you want to sell to us, to all

of our people, then here's what you can charge

for a checkup. Here is what you can charge for an MRI

And so then whether that bill goes to the

companies in Germany or directly to the government

Each country is telling the doctor or hospital

or drug company how much that bill will be.

And because the government controls access

to all of the customers. It's an offer that hospitals

"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse."

In America the idea is that you'll be a consumer.

That you'll do what you do when you go to 
Best Buy and buy a television.

But that just doesn't work in healthcare.

you often come and get health care when you're

It is a time when you have the least bargaining power.

You are not usually capable of saying, 'No.'

You're not knowledgeable enough to do it,

That's why in other countries the government is a

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The real reason American health care is so expensive

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