Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.
How did American health care get so bad? Why do we tolerate a system where you go bankrupt for a hip replacement?
Compared to socialized medicine, on almost any metric the U.S. has one of the best medical systems in the world—doctors per capita, hospital bed capacity, waiting times, surgical outcomes, access to specialists.
I’m not saying it’s great, I’m saying almost everybody else is worse. The problem is, this comes with nosebleed prices and a funding system that is corrupt, mind-bogglingly complicated, and often outright predatory.
U.S. health care costs two and a half times the average in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And it can feel like a reverse lottery where every so often it wipes you out and you go back to…
