Quantifying our incompetence at government-run health care

Almost everything having to do with health care in the U.S. is controlled by our government. A doctor cannot practice unless approved by a state government (can take 6-12 months here in Florida, so the supply of doctors always lags the demand from patients who have moved). Once he/she/ze/they is approved, half of his/her/zir/their salary will be paid for directly by government (Medicare/Medicaid) while the other half comes from government-regulated and government-subsidized “private” health insurance. Bureaucrats often talk about their heroic efforts in controlling costs. Without them in our corner, we would pay 40 percent of GDP for health care instead of 20 percent.

Every now and then we get a window into our own incompetence via an international comparison either for price or quality. “Have Eggs, Will Travel. To Freeze Them.” (New York Times, April 8):

Milvia found that in the United States, the entire process — including the medications, the doctor visits and the average number of years of egg storage — costs about $18,000, and most women can’t count on health insurance to cover it. As of 2020, less than 20 percent of U.S. companies with more than 20,000 employees had health insurance plans to cover the procedure, according to Mercer Health News, though that figure rose from 2015 to 2020.

(Why does the NYT speak of “women”? Men may also want to freeze their eggs!)

Hotels, restaurants, and other labor-intensive services aren’t cheaper in Europe than they are here in the U.S. what about egg-freezing?

Many countries have clinics that are much cheaper. In the Czech Republic and Spain, for example, you can get one round of egg-freezing done for under $5,400, according to the website of Freeze Health, which provides information on egg freezing around the world.

Milvia is taking its first women to Britain, where prices hover in the $7,000 range, because “we wanted to start in a place where there is no language or cultural barrier,” Mr. Ghavalkar said. “We also want to make sure we’re in a place where all clinics operate at very high standards.”

So it is 14X the cost of a decent hotel in London to freeze an egg in London. If we assume that a decent hotel room in a typical U.S. city is now $250 per night, egg-freezing is 72X the cost of a hotel here in the U.S.

How about running a refrigerator? Where electricity is more expensive, cold storage for eggs is about 1/4 the price:

Women who freeze their eggs abroad can choose to keep their eggs in that country where storage costs are usually cheaper. In Canada, for example, it can cost under $200 a year to store your eggs. In Spain you can do it for a little over $200. In Los Angeles, by contrast, a year of storage costs about $750. In New York City, it’s more than $1,000, according to Freeze Health.

(Again, note the hateful anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ assumption that it is “women” who freeze eggs.)

Vaguely along the same lines, the NYT also recently published “In Search of Romance? Try Moving Abroad.”:

For some American women, relocating outside of the United States has improved their dating lives. But some warn that finding love involves more than a change of address.

Now, Ms. Margo is living a dream [having sex with a wide variety of French guys] of many American women who are seeking relationships abroad, some of whom cite the toxic dating scene in the United States.

If you thought that Americans were insufficiently passionate about geriatric parenthood and/or a lifetime of Tinderhood…

Cepee Tabibian, who moved to Madrid at 35 from Austin, Texas, felt similarly. She was excited to meet people in Spain, where she noticed a culture of getting married or having children later in life than in the United States, or not getting married at all. “When I walked into the room, I wasn’t the oldest person,” Ms. Tabibian said. “I wasn’t the only single person.”

Is there a market for successful American divorce plaintiffs?

For Cindy Sheahan, meeting people outside of her circles in Denver was momentous. She started traveling solo shortly after ending her 30-year marriage in 2016.

She found the men she dated in Denver after her divorce to be unadventurous. She said she went on 60 dates in 2017.

“It was like a comedy show,” she said.

At the end of 2017, she quit her job and traveled throughout Southeast Asia for leisure, and she started using Tinder.

“Because they were out there living their life, there was a lot more energy to the dates,” Ms. Sheahan, 61, said about the people she met while traveling. “It wasn’t just somebody meeting after their work at the bank, on their way home to let out the dog in Denver.”

In 2018, she met her partner of five years, Jean-Marie Mas, a 61-year-old professional tandem paraglider from Dordogne, France, in Nepal.

Apparently the divorce lawsuit freed her from ever having to work!

Related:

• Time is ripe for Cubans to become Medicare vendors (2014)
• A modest proposal for the Carnival Triumph (2013): The Triumph would leave every morning at around 8:00 am. Medicare clients would enjoy a Cracker Barrel breakfast on board the ship. The ship would arrive in Cuba at 12 noon. Those who were well enough to walk could enjoy a stroll around Havana. The Triumph would pick up patients returning from hospital care in Cuba and anyone who’d been enjoying the sights, then depart around 2:30 pm. An early bird special dinner would be served on board starting at 5 pm, with an arrival back in Key West at 6:30 pm.
• Carnival Sunrise (instead of doing something innovative with international healthcare, the cruise line simply renamed the fire-and-sewage-plagued vessel)