When you say US prices are higher, are you quoting uninsured pricing, insured negotiated rates or rates outside of the hospital network, or perhaps a blended rate?

None of the above - I was just taking jerryab's formulation of the issue. We pay more for actual healthcare than any other country regardless of the "price" that's quoted among market participants - the amount of money that actually goes from the payors to the medical providers is about double (per capita) than typical developed countries. That's often not reflected in "prices" - for example, we have a program where we pay a certain price for the medical services that hospitals provide to low-income populations, and we also pay many of those hospitals large lump-sump block payments to keep them from going out of business. So we're paying a pretty large component of the amount of money we spend on that population's health care needs outside of the price structure we have for those services.

US Policy FAQ

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