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


See also VitaminDWiki

Cost Savings with Vitamin D category listing has 155 items such as the following

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

Id Page Hits Last modification Creator Categories
1855 Sepsis is both prevented and treated by Vitamin D - many studies 298763
15 Mar, 2024 16:58
admin Breathing
Trauma and surgery
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Intervention
Infant-Child
Inflammation
AI
2424 Vitamin D and Iodine are similar, and both are deficient and important to health 63949
12 Feb, 2022 19:48
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
Iodine
7233 Cost savings with Vitamin D 41295
01 Oct, 2023 23:42
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
Category
6724 Healthy pregnancies need lots of vitamin D 29756
15 Mar, 2024 12:40
admin Pregnancy
Cost savings with Vitamin D
14083 Vitamin D is needed before most surgeries – many studies and RCTs 27695
10 Jan, 2024 18:47
admin Trauma and surgery
Loading dose for Vitamin D
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Top news
8078 Costs of Pregnancy much reduced by Vitamin D 21807
11 Aug, 2017 15:45
admin Pregnancy
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Top news
629 HMOs will save millions of dollars with vitamin D 21651
03 Jun, 2013 16:02
admin Trauma and surgery
Cost savings with Vitamin D
2782 If you cannot readily get medical treatment, consider Alternative Med such as vitamin D 20853
16 Dec, 2019 14:18
admin Seniors
Pain - chronic
Cost savings with Vitamin D
10174 Presenteeism reduces productivity (Vitamin D can help) 20605
07 Nov, 2018 20:30
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
2694 VA showed increased vitamin D associated with lower health costs - Lancet May 2012 19596
02 Oct, 2023 03:21
admin Tests for Vitamin D
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Top news
5973 Pure North (Calgary) improves health by raising vitamin D to 60 ng 17027
29 Apr, 2018 10:17
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
Intervention
Vitamin D in Canada
Optimum
Quality of Life
8287 Vitamin D and Glutamine reduced Trauma Center deaths by half – March 2017 16610
14 May, 2019 21:09
admin Mortality and D
Trauma and surgery
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Intervention
Cognitive
8139 Health Care Costs in US are increasing - infographics and Vitamin D - Dec 2016 14987
11 Aug, 2019 12:15
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
2059 Some form of vitamin D may be the lowest cost treatment for CKD – Spanish Sept 2011 14355
16 Mar, 2015 00:08
admin Kidney
Treatment by Vitamin D
Cost savings with Vitamin D
4197 Opportunity: Enhance Workplace Wellness programs with Vitamin D 14099
15 Jun, 2016 16:39
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
High Risk
1753 MRSA inpatient cost 2X higher if less than 20 ng vitamin D – June 2011 13188
14 Jul, 2019 15:17
admin Immunity
Trauma and surgery
Cost savings with Vitamin D
4925 Vitamin D Webinar - cost of pre-term birth etc- Baggerly Nov 2013 13076
30 Nov, 2017 17:31
admin Pregnancy
Books, videos on Vitamin D
Cost savings with Vitamin D
Infant-Child
4432 A smoker costs a company 5816 dollars every year – Aug 2013 11598
15 Aug, 2019 18:41
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
6972 Do not expect a doctor to recommend a pill which will eliminate his job (vitamin D) 11253
07 Feb, 2023 13:55
admin Cost savings with Vitamin D
Top news
Increased use of D
1825 Dr. Grant on vitamin D and mortality in VitaminDWiki 11207
09 Oct, 2022 16:49
admin Mortality and D
Cost savings with Vitamin D

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

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

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

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