Two sides of our healthcare system failures

Couple dead in apparent murder-suicide left notes saying they couldn’t afford medical care, police say
... Health-care spending in the United States has been increasing for decades, and costs for senior citizens are higher than those for citizens as a whole, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

An average of $18,424 per person was spent on medical care for people ages 65 and older in 2010 — five times the spending per child and three times the spending per working-age person, a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says.

Roughly 65 percent of senior citizens’ medical costs are paid for through government services such as Medicare, which covers almost all seniors, and Medicaid, which covers low-income people and families. Health-care expenses more than double between ages 70 and 90.

Note that these old people were not uninsured. They had what our system offers. They were simply people for whom the US healthcare system didn't work because it cost too much.

The real reason the U.S. spends twice as much on health care as other wealthy countries
... the United States spends almost twice as much on health care as 10 other wealthy countries, a difference driven by high prices — including doctors' and nurses' salaries, hospital charges, pharmaceuticals and administrative overhead. ...

Nonspecialist doctors in the United States are paid on average $220,000 per year — double the average salary in the other countries. Nurses and specialists were also compensated better.  ... Administrative costs were 8 percent of health care spending in the United States, vs. an average of 3 percent among wealthy countries. ...

... prices can be difficult to curb, because one person's high price is another person's profit margin or salary. Hospitals are often among the biggest employers in a region. Pharmaceutical companies offer American consumers big innovation but big price tags — and the debate about how or whether something needs to be done about drug costs has typically fallen apart under the weight of extensive lobbying by the industry. ...

I may be wrong, but a heck of a lot of the political discussion of healthcare focuses on what seems only the first half of the problem: yes, we all need access. That means to the providers -- doctors, hospitals, etc (etc. of which there is a lot) -- there's some assurance they'll get paid something if they treat us. But we also need to be able to afford the care we need. Too many people have "insurance" which comes with costs so high they don't dare use it except in the most dire emergencies.

I'd be happier with the Democratic health care debates if more energy were going into saying directly what they hope to do about the affordability side of the challenge. We don't easily believe that "Medicare for all" would completely relieve us of impossible bills. After all, Medicare as it exists doesn't do that, though those of us who've made it past 65 are glad and grateful to have it. But we wonder ...