Health Care: Us vs. Them

Ezra Klein had some eye-popping charts on the relative cost of health care in other countries.

Now, you know that we pay more, right? But check out the details on specific services.

Here's Ezra:

The health-care reform debate has done a good job avoiding the subject of prices. The argument over the Medicare-attached public plan was, in a way that most people didn't understand, an argument about prices, but it quickly became an argument about a public option without a pricing dimension, and never really looked back. The administration has been very interested in the finding that some states are better at providing cost-effective care than other states, but not in the finding that some countries are better at purchasing care than other countries. "A health-care debate in this country that isn't aware of the price differential is not an informed debate," says Halvorson. By that measure, we have not had a very informed debate.

It is interesting that those who denounce the cost of health care reform, spend precious little time discussing controlling the costs of procedures.

(H/t GOOD blog)