http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/50-u-s-health-care-statistics-that-will-absolutely-astonish-you
50 U.S. Health Care Statistics That Will Absolutely Astonish You
By Michael Snyder, on June 29th, 2011
The
U.S. health care system has become one gigantic money making scam, and
you are about to see the statistics that prove it. Today, the United
States spends more on health care per person than any other country in
the world by far. The health
insurance companies and the big
pharmaceutical corporations are raking in gigantic mountains of cash and
yet the quality of the health care that we receive in return is rather
quite poor. People living in Puerto Rico have a greater life expectancy
than we do. Residents of Cuba have a lower
infant mortality rate than
we do. We are the most medicated population on the planet and yet we
are also one of the sickest. If the U.S. health care system was a
country, it would have the 6th largest economy on the globe and yet
rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes continue to increase. The
U.S. health care statistics that you are about to read below are
absolutely stunning. For as much money as we shell out for health care,
we should have the greatest system in the entire world. But we don't.
Something has gone horribly wrong.
As you read this, there are hordes of health bureaucrats and greedy
corporate fatcats that are becoming incredibly wealthy while the rest of
us go broke trying to pay for our health care. In the United States
today, health care bills cause more bankruptcies than anything else
does. Millions of Americans are afraid to go to the hospital because
they know that even a short visit would be a huge financial burden.
Sadly, our politicians in Washington D.C. continue to make the
problem worse.
Obamacare was one of the worst pieces of legislation
that anyone has ever come up with in the history of the United States.
You could put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters
for a thousand years and they wouldn't come up with anything as bad as
Obamacare. Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the
health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical corporations,
Obamacare actually gives them more power. In fact, huge portions of
Obamacare
are virtually identical
to a bill that was written by the health insurance trade association in
2009. Under Obamacare our health care costs will go up even faster and
the quality of our health care will continue to go down. So please
don't try to tell me that Obamacare is the solution to anything.
The health care system in the United States is so broken that it
probably cannot be repaired. The entire thing needs to be dismantled
and completely reinvented.
If you doubt this, just check out the stats that I have compiled below.
As I put together this list of statistics,
Business Insider proved to be a very valuable resource. In addition, I relied heavily on the following articles which I previously authored....
*
25 Shocking Facts That Prove That The Entire U.S. Health Care Industry Has Become One Giant Money Making Scam
*
18
Ridiculous Statistics About Medical Bills, Medical Debt And The Health
Care Industry That Will Make You So Mad You Will Want To Tear Your Hair
Out
*
The Coming Doctor Shortage
The following are 50 U.S. health care statistics that will absolutely astonish you....
#1 What the United States spent on health care in 2009 was greater
than the entire GDP of Great Britain.
#2 According to the
Bureau of Economic Analysis,
health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption
back in 1980. Today they account for approximately
16.3%.
#3 The United States spent 2.47 trillion dollars on health care in 2009. It is being projected that the U.S. will spend
4.5 trillion dollars on health care in 2019.
#4 One study found that
approximately 41 percent of working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt.
#5 According to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine, medical bills are a major factor in
more than 60 percent
of the personal bankruptcies in the United States. Of those
bankruptcies that were caused by medical bills, approximately 75 percent
of them involved individuals that actually did have health
insurance.
#6 Over the past decade, health insurance premiums
have risen three times faster than wages have in the United States.
#7 The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, brought in a staggering
$68.7 million
during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth
approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million
in wages and other forms of compensation. The funny thing is that he
left the company and didn't even work the whole year.
#8 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States combined to receive
nearly $200 million in total compensation for 2009.
#9 Even as the rest of the country struggled with a deep recession, U.S. health insurance companies increased their profits
by 56 percent during 2009 alone.
#10 According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America's five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009
with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.
#11 In the United States, health insurance
administration expenses account for 8 percent of all health care costs.
In Finland, that figure
is just 2 percent.
#12 Health insurance rate increases are getting out of control.
According to the Los Angeles Times,
Blue Shield of California announced plans earlier this year to raise
rates an average of 30% to 35%, and some individual policy holders
were slated to see their health insurance premiums rise by up to 59
percent.
#13 According to an article on the Mother Jones website, health insurance premiums for small employers in the U.S.
increased 180% between 1999 and 2009.
#14 Since 2003, health insurance companies have shelled out
more than $42 million in state-level campaign contributions.
#15 There were
more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits each during 2008.
#16 Each year,
tens of billions of dollars is spent on pharmaceutical marketing in the United States alone.
#17 Prescription drugs cost
about 50% more in the United States than they do in other countries.
#18 Nearly half of all Americans
now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to a CDC report
that was recently released. According to the report, approximately
one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs, and
more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more drugs on a
regular basis.
#19 According to the CDC,
approximately three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the United States because of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs.
#20 The Food and Drug Administration reported
1,742 prescription drug recalls in 2009, which was a gigantic increase from 426 drug recalls in 2008.
#21 Children in the United States are
three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants than children in Europe are.
#22 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America
is higher than in any other country in the world.
#23 Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs.
According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.
#24 According to one doctor
interviewed by Fox News,
"a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen" will cost $13,000 at
his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there
will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the
wound is.
#25 Why are c-sections on the rise? It is because a vaginal delivery costs approximately $5,992, while a c-section costs
approximately $8,558.
#26 According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States had a higher infant mortality rate
than 45 other nations in 2009.
#27 The infant mortality rate in the United States
is nearly three times as high as it is in Singapore.
#28 It is estimated that hospitals overcharge Americans
by about 10 billion dollars every single year.
#29 In fact, one trained medical billing advocate
says that over 90 percent of all the medical bills that she has audited
contain "
gross overcharges".
#30 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down
by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don't know how the system works then you are out of luck.
#31 Over the last decade, the number of Americans without health insurance has risen from about 38 million
to about 52 million.
#32 People living in the United States
are three times more likely to have diabetes than people living in the United Kingdom.
#33 Today, people living in Puerto Rico
have a greater life expectancy than people living in the United States do.
#34 According to OECD statistics, Americans
are twice as obese as Canadians are.
#35 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today,
one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.
#36 The U.S. government now says that the Medicare trust fund will run out
five years faster than they were projecting just last year.
#37 It is being projected that the federal government will account
for more than 50 percent of all health care spending in 2012.
#38 Greece has
twice as many hospital beds per person as the United States does.
#39 The state of California now ranks
dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.
#40 According to one survey, approximately 1 out of every 4 Californians under the age of 65
has absolutely no health insurance.
#41 According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report, "inefficient claims processing" costs the U.S. health care system
210 billion dollars every single year.
#42 Today, approximately
40% of all U.S. doctors are age 55 or older.
#43 According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, we were already going to be facing a shortage of more than
150,000 doctors over the next 15 years even before Obamacare was passed.
#44 An IBD/TIPP poll taken back in August 2009 found that
4 out of every 9 American doctors said that they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passed Obamacare.
#45 According to a survey
published in the New England Journal of Medicine, approximately
one-third of all practicing physicians in the United States indicated
that they may leave the medical profession because of the new health
care law.
#46 According to a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors that was conducted in August 2010,
40 percent
of all U.S. doctors plan to "retire, seek a nonclinical job in health
care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care" at some
point over the next three years.
#47 According to the executive director of Physician Hospitals of America, Obamacare has already
forced the cancellation of at least 60 doctor-owned hospitals that were scheduled to open soon.
#48 According to a report released in 2010, Americans
spend approximately twice as much as residents of other developed countries do on health care.
#49 If the U.S. health care system was a country, it would be
the 6th largest economy in the entire world.
#50 According to numbers released by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping
875,000 Americans were "medical tourists" in 2010.
