Expert: American values harm healthcare

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- An expert blames American values for the U.S. healthcare crisis and says reforming the system will require strong medicine.

"Americans prize individual choice and resist limiting care," Dr. Marc Nuwer, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement. "We believe that if doctors can treat very ill patients aggressively and keep every moment of people in the last stages of life under medical care, then they should. We choose to hold these values. Consequently, we choose to have a more expensive system than Europe or Canada."

U.S. medical expenditures exceed $2 trillion annually -- four times that spent on national defense. By 2015, the U.S. government is projected to spend $4 trillion on healthcare, or 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

Half of Medicare costs support very sick people in their last stages of life and experts estimate Medicare funds will be exhausted by 2018, Nuwer said.

Thirty-one percent of U.S. healthcare funds go toward administration.

"We push a lot of paper," Nuwer said. "We spend twice as much as Canada, which has a more streamlined healthcare system."

Part of the problem is that doctors are oblivious to the price of options they're prescribing for patients, Nuwer said.

"Does a fancy electric wheelchair cost $500 or $50,000?" Nuwer asked "Most doctors have no clue. We need to give physicians feedback about the dollar signs behind their orders."