$10k per year per person is $3 trillion dollars per year. That is a lot of money.
Most people are clueless about the real cost of healthcare.
what is the break down of the costs?
How much of that is insurance premiums, profits, 100$ overpriced ibuprofen pills and bandaids at hospitals
Great question. And I have some opinions on this being a physician and seeing a lot of waste. The US pays almost twice as much for healthcare as compared to other developed countries. Where does that money go?
1) Physicians: I hate saying this, but physicians make more money in the US compared to other countries. I will add that in other countries physicians don't come out $350k in debt, as well as have a shorter track to practice allowing them to start their career earlier. Also in many of those countries physicians are not subject to frivolous law suits.
2) Regulations: Go to any hospital and doctors office and add up all the non patient care personnel in that facility. These people do not add any value to the patient but are required to meet regulatory standards as well as billing/coding needs.
3) End of life care: Families of patients with no quality of life, severe dementia, bed bound, half paralyzed will receive medical treatment to prolong their agony. Some suspect this accounts for 20% of medicare cost.
4) Insurance company profits: There should be no need to have an insurance middle man skimming their piece off of every transaction. Insurance should exist for catastrophic expenses not for refilling your blood pressure medication or seeing your primary care doctor for a cold.
5) Shortage of primary care physicians forcing patients into emergency departments for primary care needs.
Today if someone with insurance goes to see their doctor with a cough the process is as follows after showing up at the office:
a) give insurance info
b) insurance info must be processed
c) a person is required to fill out regulatory information regarding your lifestyle and habits
d) all that info must be placed into expensive computer software that requires IT to manage
e) physician finally sees you, examines you and gives you a recommendation and may write a prescription all of which takes about 5 minutes
f) physician spends another 5-10 minutes documenting your care
g) coder must take that documentation and turn it into something billable
h) billing process must take affect and the insurance company must agree to pay for the visit. If rejected that bill can be requested to be re-evaluated.
i) for brevity I will not go into detail at the hoops that must be jumped through at the pharmacy when you deliver your script. But that also is filled with regulatory and insurance burdens.
or
The patient goes to see their doctor, there is a nurse/secretary at the front desk that asks you to sign in and swipe a credit card. Basic info is documented in a much less expensive computer system. You see your doctor for 5 minutes who documents for 1 minute regarding your visit (less documentation is needed since there is no need to send to a coder/biller and there is less regulatory demand.) You get your prescription and finalize your bill through your credit card.
As you can see the second process requires less personnel and takes up less time allowing the physician to see more patients per day. The total cost of the visit drops dramatically.
The thing is, there are hundreds of thousands of people employed by healthcare that would lose their jobs if we instantly fixed the problem. It really isn't as simple as flip a switch, increase medicare tax to 15% and everyone gets medicare. I honestly do not see any legitimate improvement for a very long time. Previous and current administrations do not show any desire to fix the problems I just laid out. I suspect future administrations will have similar attitudes.