Yes, yes, America has terrible health care — even a tech podcast says so — while paying an order of magnitude more for it than other rich countries. But hear me out: what if the costs are so high because Americans are (unsuccessfully) trying to buy their way out of poor policy decisions... blog.miljko.org

@miljko Agreed that various U.S. policies have made healthier lifestyles almost a counter-cultural luxury pursuit; but I also think U.S. economic structures of how we pay for healthcare snarls things up quite a bit as well. And don't get me started on access.

@annahavron Hah, yes, there is so much waste. But it's not like fixing waste would improve outcomes — it's a case of true, true, and unrelated. If anything, focusing on the underlying causes of bad health might do more to decrease waste. "Counter-cultural luxury pursuit" is a beatufiul turn of phrase, by the way.

@miljko Ah, I didn't understand you were getting specifically at outcomes.

@annahavron Well, both outcomes and prices. I think there are two ways to look at it:

1. American health care is too expensive. We should do everything we can to make it more affordable so that people can have more of it for less money, therefore improving outcomes. I think this type of thinking is most common, to the exclusion of…
2. Typical American lifestyle leads to bad outcomes, driving up costs of health care compared to other countries. Lifestyle changes will lead to less demand for health care and therefore decreased prices.

Mind you, I think the answer is a little bit of (or a lot of!) both, but number 1 is overemphasized.