Dark567 wrote: As far as preventative care(in the US sense), most countries don't do it as extensively as we do. It has mostly been found to be a waste of money which is why in a lot of countries you don't see things like annual physicals and the testing(and liability) culture we have in the US. In most of the other systems of the world, you only go to the doctor when something is already wrong not for preventative medicine(although there are a few exceptions like Pap smears and colonoscopies that are done every 3 instead of 1 year). The idea of US style preventative medicine majorly reducing payouts is a myth, in fact, it is mostly the opposite and an unneeded expense.
I have no professional experience with medicine, so I guess I wasn't familiar with the definition of 'preventative care,' but I'm an American and I would've assumed that 'preventative care' meant diet and exercise and other lifestyle changes. I think if we had a system that pushed this kind of care from doctors or more effectively covered work with the appropriate experts, payouts absolutely would go down.
I mean seriously, having the highest obesity rate in the developed world isn't really helping us with medical costs, just for one example.