Reddit mentions of The Health Care Handbook

It's important to realize how incredible some of the things that are being done in medicine that weren't possible even 100 years ago and thus it makes sense to be pricey, but here's a quick explanation.
First, I recommend every American reads the healthcare handbook which was written by two medical students recently at Washington University in St. Louis - it breaks the American Healthcare system down beautifully.

To give you a quicker read though: There are two large areas of why healthcare (medical bills) are expensive.

1. Those present in any system of healthcare:
   Equipment : The incredible equipment we have today takes lots of money and time to develop and drug development leads to patent laws and thus the healthcare provider must make back their money to pay for all of their expensive equipment and your drugs.
   Training In the U.S. to become a physician you need a bachelors degree followed by four years of medical school and a minimum of 3 year residency. four years of med school can run you well into a $250k, average indebtedness hovers above $100k and residencies are 85+ hour work weeks for below minimum wage.
   
   
2. Unique to the U.S. and why bills are super high?
   In the U.S. due to our mostly private healthcare system, large HMOs and Insurance companies play a game with hospitals. Because they can guarantee a large number of patients and must pay the bill, they negotiate with healthcare providers to actually only pay a fraction. The provider then raises it's rates and the cycle repeats. Those without insurance get screwed.
   tdlr: A small fraction of the U.S. is stuck actually footing those huge bills and large HMOs and Insurance companies pay them and although they're expensive they normally still make a profit because so many people are paying them premiums as a backup
   Overhead : The U.S. has a huge overhead cost in healthcare (due to how confusing and mixed up our billing is as a private industry).
   
   

A couple of med students wrote a great book. It is a pretty easy read and makes healthcare delivery understandable. I think everyone should have to read it. Not just healthcare workers, everyone.

Anyway, it's pretty cheap [check it out] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0615650937/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/187-3851700-0854829)