Nominal per capita income in India is ~$2000 while in the US it is ~$60,000. Simplistically one would expect costs to be approximately 30x higher in the US so a 20x difference in cost of $200,000 to $10,00 doesn't seem absurd.
I have no idea on the DRG associated with pulmonary thrombectomy to even estimate what Medicare allows for reimbursement, but it’s not going to be $200,000. If I find it, I will reply to this comment with an estimate.
Purchasing power parity compared to USA: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF
The medicare DRG data is available here https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...
Covered charges for 2016 ranged from ~$64,000 to ~$110,000, with ACTUAL average total payments ranging $13,000 to $26,000.
This article is using differences in purchasing power parity AND the difference in charges / actual payments to generate an eye-popping headline. At the actual data level, India is more expensive compared to the US.
Yes many places lose money in Medicare as it probably reimburses at around 80% of cost but it’s the only data we have, so it provides the closest thing to a national comparison.
My point is that what this article ultimately shows is that the cross border comparison can generate striking numbers but almost all articles like this never place the Indian “cheap” numbers in context.
Can we start blaming Physicians and Pharmacists yet? Physicians are 300k+/yr earners because they artificially limit admissions of medical school.
Not to mention its dangerous to use Pharmacists in 2019. Everything should be done by computers. Expensive Dangerous rubber stamp.
But yes, Hospitals, insurance companies, and pharmacies are to blame.
To no surprise, all top 20 lobbyists, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Do they? I thought it was about number of residency spots available that was the real bottleneck. Anyway, sources please!
See https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-docto...
There's other news, but based on the amount of time it takes to make a doctor and the hysteresis in the market, this should do.