Reply #94: Kaiser [View All]

[Recursion]

Here's a chart from 2003 (it's the first one that came up on Google; you can dig through KFF for more recent stuff)

http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm

The Canadians manage to cover everyone for quite a bit less than that per person/per month. I don't quite get why it would cost so much more here.

Nobody really does. It doesn't seem to be one single thing.

There was a very good episode of "This American Life" that talked about this:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/391/more-is-less

Doctors, patients, hospitals, the government, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies all share part of the blame.

And, seriously, that's a great episode that really shows how wide the problems spread. Well worth listening to.