Six Charts That Illustrate Just How Much Higher Health Care Costs Are For Americans

[onehandle]

Decades of data have shown time and again that the U.S. has the costliest health care system in the world by a variety of measures.

Still, a report released by the International Federation of Health Plans (i.e., health insurance companies) today provides a striking reminder of just how much more expensive health care is for Americans.

The report compared prices in the U.S. with prices in 11 other nations. It found that average prices in the United States are higher for most medical services cited in the report, but at the top end of the range, U.S. health care prices can be staggering compared to what citizens of other nations pay.

Planning to have a baby? At an average price for a normal delivery of $9,775, you'll pay more than a woman in the 10 other countries in the report -- and possibly as much as $16,653, or double what it would cost an Australian woman and more than 14 times the price for a woman in Argentina. The average price of a Cesarean section in the U.S., $15,041, is also higher than any other country -- and it could cost as much as $26,305.













http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/charts-health-care-costs-americans_n_2957266.html

[CAG]

1. although the data is correct, and the averages displayed accurately

show that USA costs are dramatically higher across the board, that doesn't excuse the misleading way that the data is presented where a casual viewer will be comparing the 95th percentile of the USA to the average (ie, ~50th percentile) of the other countries. It gives the knuckledraggers against reform easy targets to claim that our side is trying to skew the data and mislead americans. Unfortunately, its totally unnecessary because if they just compared the means it would still demonstrate the point that our healthcare system is financially untenable.