america, unsatisfied with spending vastly more privately on healthcare than the rest of the world, while also spending more publicly on healthcare than the rest of the world, continues to find ways to make healthcare yet more expensive and ruinous for its citizens.
That is more a function of the size of the US medical system than its overall quality. The average American is going to whatever hospital is closest when they have an emergency, but if you’re healthy and wealthy enough to go anywhere then you can pick and choose extreme outliers. Large countries simply have more extreme outliers in both directions.
More US citizens seek treatment outside the US than foreign nationals seek treatment inside the US. But, people have specific diseases and sometimes the best treatment is inside the US, though more often it isn’t.
I don't think it's true. In fact, I'm pretty sure each year 14 millions Americans are going to Canada for medical treatment, and richer American are going to Singapore/Uk.
Metabolic health is responsible for at least 3/5 of healthcare costs. 4/5 of SNAP recipients have at least one underlying metabolic health issue. Big food wins. Big medicine wins. Big pharma wins.
"Costs attributable to overweight and obesity in Canada were $6.0 billion in 2006, with 66% attributable to obesity. This corresponds to 4.1% of the total health expenditures in Canada in 2006. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-789X....
This is a notoriously difficult thing to estimate, and highly influenced by exact definitions of any given study, so some variance is to be expected. But going from around 6% to >60% seems like quite a jump.
Sure, but even that cherry looks a whole lot more like the rest of the numbers I've found than the one grandparent comment offered.
The study you cite only examines the costs for cardiometabolic disease, not all healthcare costs. And then says that suboptimal diet is responsible for 18% of that specific category.
"18% of the costs of the one category most closely linked" and "5-10% of all healthcare costs" seem like plausibly compatible measures. Whereas the grandparent comment's claim remains out of synch with those by an order of magnitude.
Yes, 20% of the cost "from heart disease, stroke, and diabetes", which is significantly less than 20% of the total. (The press release has less ambiguous wording: "18 percent of all heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes costs in the country").
Does this data even include the costs associated with private EMS transporting tens of thousands of type 2 diabetes/dialysis patients every morning from their private residences and skilled nursing facilities to chop shops like Davita?
