The price of various medical equipment is different in countries such as the United States and Europe. To be exact, the US pays two to six times more for most expenditures than Germany (Wenzi & Mossialos, 2018). Findings generally suggest that prices for medical devices were lowest in Germany and highest in the United States and that these differences in prices were caused by the differences in prices of the same models. Even though both countries are quite similar in economy, sharing a free market economic structure, they differ in overall health expenditures. Wenzi and Mossialos (2018) suggest that the variation of prices depends on the willingness to pay of different buyers, which in turn is impacted by the demand in different countries for certain devices. Germany has a developed public system, whereas Americans live with a privatized one. For this reason, manufacturers can exploit their bargaining power with US citizens and charge more for the same device.
Healthcare economics vary significantly from economics in other industries, for example, the basic principles of supply and demand. In healthcare economics, the demand is downward-slopping, meaning people are very sensitive to the price of healthcare. Bhattacharya and others (2018) explain that “people with different budget constraints, different life experiences, different qualities of life evaluate the trade-off between medical care and other goods differently” (p. 9). Most people will determine wherever or not to receive care based on its cost, which produces inequality in society as to who is able to pay for medical procedures. This is a problem specific to the United States, as the healthcare a patient receives is based on their wallet, in contrast to most other countries around the world. Despite this, studying health economics is very important – it provides people with information that enables them to make educated decisions for their health and everything connected to it, for example, medical insurance.
References
Bhattacharya, J., Hyde, T., & Tu, P. (2018). Health Economics. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Wenzi, M., & Mossialos, E. (2018). Prices For Cardiac Implant Devices May Be Up To Six Times Higher In The US Than In Some European Countries. Health Affairs, 37 (10).