Brits Try To Guess How Much US Healthcare Costs, React With Great Surprise When They Hear The Real Prices

On average, other wealthy countries spend about half as much per person on healthcare when compared to the U.S.. And when their residents hear about this, they can't believe it. Just like the Britons in this video.

Yesterday, JOE, a publisher from the UK, released a video where they ask members of the British public to guess how much they'd have to pay for simple medical services in America. The naive answers and the horror in their eyes after hearing the actual numbers really make the clip worthwhile.

More info: YouTube

Experts have previously thought that high utilization rates could explain high spending in the U.S, however, CNBC pointed out that hospital discharge rates for various procedures, such as knee and hip replacements and different types of heart surgeries, indicate that the use of care services in the U.S. is not so different compared to other countries.

The Brookings Institute, for example, has suggested that low social spending might also partly be to blame, since funding programs to assist low-income families, the elderly and the disabled would mitigate the demand for medical care, however, researchers can't find a substantial difference in U.S. spending on social programs.

A very apparent difference between the American health care system and systems abroad is pricing. Nurses, primary care doctors and other professionals earn significantly more in the U.S. compared to other countries (Canada, Germany, Australia, the U.K,. Japan, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Denmark). On average, general physicians in America made $218,173 in 2016, which was double the average of generalists in the other countries (pay ranged from $86,607 in Sweden to $154,126 in Germany).

Next, administrative costs. They accounted for 8 percent of total national health expenditures in the U.S. For other countries, they ranged from 1 to 3 percent. Additionally, health care professionals in America reported a higher level of “administrative burden” as well. A survey showed that doctors spend a significant amount of time dealing with insurance claims and reporting clinical data.

The U.S. also spent $1,443 per capita on pharmaceuticals. The average pharmaceutical spending of all 11 countries came to $749 per capita. Switzerland was closest to the U.S. with $939.