Dr — No question, patients could take better care of themselves. But nobody can snap their fingers and make that happen, except maybe in their own case.
gringo — There’s a fair amount of debate about all of those issues. The most common view is that because the nature of health insurance is to pay for everything above some minimum, there is no incentive for either doctor or patient to economize. You basically buy anything with the slightest chance of working.
Most of what the Gov spends goes to private sector providers. Medicare or Medicaid reimburses doctors, hospitals, etc. As I mentioned, private spending goes up as fast as public. One case where the Gov provides health care — the Veterans Administration — has drawn a book by Phillip Longman praising the VA, and of course recently the Walter Reed situation (though WR is run by the Army) has led to criticisms of VA hospitals.
The U.S. system is less public than most any other, and nobody is racing to copy us.
Ezra Klein has an article in The American Prospect on some other countries’ systems.
