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If you can identify anyone who can be fired without affecting the quality or timeliness of healthcare, then I am in favor of getting rid of them. But I am not sure how much of a dent you can make that way. Our standards are very high. The last few times I visited a hospital, the people were in private rooms. That seems to be the norm now. In a lot of places you are on a ward with a bunch of other people. There has to be a cost to that. In Canada, you can wait a very long time for some procedures. If someone needs something right now and they have no capacity, they send them to - guess where? The United States. We are literally the relief valve for their system. If we go their way, who is going to pick up our slack?

At least we are not yet in the same boat as the UK. People who have been waiting in line forever for some procedure are being pushed back even further to make room in front of them for illegal immigrants.

There were legions of people in the ward we were in and at any one time it looked like most of them were out in the halls talking. That does not mention the other legions of people in mandated medical records that seem to become property with ring fences around them, they sure are not shared.

I don’t think it would take long to identify redundancy but that is not the subject. The subject is excessive charges when the opportunity arises evidenced by huge apparent differences from one area to another.

Our medical system just costs too much on a global comparative scale.

I remember the days of wards and double rooms. They weren’t that bad when some good sense was made of parings. In unusual or very bad conditions single rooms were indicated and used. They were not standard though.

How many of these nations have health care that is much worse or less capable than ours? We don’t just spend more, we spend a LOT more.

In terms of life expectancy which seems to be a good measure of bang for the buck we don’t rank in the top 46 by life expectancy which does not vary by a whole lot but suggest some other measure if you do not like that one. Still, the point remains that the US spends a LOT more than other countries but does not appear to get a lot in return others don’t have for a lot less money.

https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/

We also spend more per student on education than all but three OECD nations. Just a quick review shows we don’t get much bang for the buck there either.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/

There are also 20 countries that outscore US in overall PISA scores.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scores-by-country