US Healthcare is 2X more expensive than in other countries - what can be done

I started this page Feb 20, 2018

I would appreciate your comments/suggestions
Henry Lahore, Founder of VitaminDWiki [hlahore@gmail.com]

The following appear to be unique to US healthcare

1) More medical testing in US

• US doctors fear liability costs if they fail to order all possible tests

2) More administrative time (paperwork) in US due to multiple payers

• 5 full-time employees in a hospital just to meet Medicare quality guidelines

• Many employees are needed to deal with billing to multiple payers

  • Procedures allowed/disallowed and amounts vary between the payers

3) Medicare/insurance are not permitted to recommend lower-cost drugs

4) Profit comes from treating, not preventing

• US Hospital administrators now have MBAs, not medical degrees

• US Doctors fear losing their position if they do not bring in enough business to clinic, hospital

5) Many US doctors get huge kickbacks/perks for prescribing certain drugs

• chemotherapy (Big-Pharma), vaccines (Aetna), etc

6) US hospitals can be destructively competitive in large cities

• Increases number of expensive testing facilities, and increases # of tests to justify them

• Increases number of specialists at each hospital

7) Govt. gives exclusive rights to manufacture various drugs

• Lack of competition results in huge price increases (10X is common)

8) Change laws so as to allow Pharmacists to suggest lower cost options

What an individual can do to reduce costs

1) Reduce the need for medical care

• By supplementing with vitamin D (easiest and lowest cost solution)
  • After getting all customers of a clinic to 80 ng of Vitamin D, the clinic visits dropped by 3X

• By having a healthier diet – but this is very expensive and takes a lot of time and willpower

  • 20 cents to get a 50,000 IU Vitamin D capsule once a month

  • Over $1,000 to get the same amount of Vitamin D from wild salmon (3 meals a day of salmon)

• By not smoking – note, if you cannot quite smoking. Vitamin D reduces the health consequences of smoking

2)Take Vitamin D before entering the hospital (both planned and emergency)

• Loading up on 400,000 IU Vitamin D greatly decreases both days in hospital and death

3) Increase additional nutrients which provide wide-spread health benefits

• The following all have become low during the past few decades (along with Vitamin D)
  • Magnesium, Omega-3, Vitamin K2

Large group of employers can do the following

1. Buy some drugs at bulk discounts not available to individual hospitals

2. Cancel some of the laws which restrict drug competition

3. Pay for Continuing Medical Education classes in nutrition and prevention

4. Pay medical professionals to learn about nutrition and prevention

5. Pay for research into promising cost-effective alternatives – such as vitamin D

   • Currently it takes 17-50 years to actually use a procedure which already has proven benefit
6. Pay patients and doctors for using Vitamin D with pregnancies
   • Net savings is about $2,000 per pregnancy
7. Pay for increased wellness, nutrition education (in-person and web), conferences,
   • Note: Big-Pharma underwrites 100+ medical conferences each year
8. Change co-pay so that it proportional to salary
   • Currently co-pay causes many employes to forgo medical help

Groups of Employers which are trying to reduce costs of healthcare

• Employer alliance is trying to reduce the cost of health care – Aug 2017

• Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Team Up to Try to Disrupt Health Care Jan 30, 2018

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See also VitaminDWiki

Cost Savings with Vitamin D category listing has items such as the following

20 Most-visited pages in "Cost Savings with Vitamin D" category in VitaminDWiki

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Items in both categories: "Cost savings with Vitamin D" and "Trauma & Surgery" are listed here:

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Note: Annual health premiums increases 2X, deductables increased 3X

Workers Pay More for Health Care as Companies Shift Burden, Survey Finds NYT Sept 2016