
Why do prescription drugs costmore in the US? - sophcw
http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/future/economics/216591-prescription-drugs-outside-us-infographic
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e40
Because we don't have cost controls!! It's as simple as that. Every other
advanced (or whatever you want to call them) country on earth has cost
controls on their health care.

EDIT: every one of the countries cited in the article have cost controls
except us.

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doyoulikeworms
If the US had health care cost controls (and if every state expanded
Medicaid), its healthcare system would be pretty good. It's already quite
similar to the Swiss system, except for this critical lack of cost regulation.

As far as I know, Massachusetts's "Romneycare" (the blueprint for Obamacare)
was improved to add these cost controls, but I don't know how it has worked
out for them. They seem to have very high per capita health care costs
relative to the rest of the country.

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techdragon
Not as a criticism of your logic but out of curiosity I woul love to know if
the per capita health care cost statistics you read or are thinking of, are
including or excluding people not paying for health care. Its a common tactic
in the manipulation of population statistics to "chose what's included" and in
this case the inclusion of people not paying would lower the per capita cost
and excluding the would raise it. If the Massachusetts and nation stats don't
make the same choice on this matter it makes them much harder to compare
fairly.

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doyoulikeworms
Actually, thanks for prompting me to check on that stat. It came from here:
[http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/health-spending-per-
cap...](http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/health-spending-per-capita/)

And in returning to it, I realized that it's from 2009!

That said, it seems like it's simply total health care spending divided by
population per state. But I'm not sure. Either way, it's pretty outdated.

