The $28,000 Appendectomy

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 5, 6:36AM EST

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An organization called the International Federation of Health Plans keeps track of medical costs in most of the developed nations around the world. As would be expected, the costs for most procedures and medical treatment is highest in the United States. It has been pointed out often that American health care costs are too high and are a much more substantial part of the gross domestic product than they are in any other country.

The latest data from the International Federation of Health Plans shows that an appendectomy costs $27,797 in America. This is in the 95th percentile of commercial costs for the surgery. The U.S. average for the procedure is $13,003. The U.S. “commercial low” is $7,756. But who wants to be the patient who gets the cheapest surgery?

The comparable cost of the same surgery in Germany is $3,093. There is no evidence that German patients get worse results. All that can be said from the research is that the costs in the U.S. are much, much higher.

There are a number of arguments about why medical expenses are so much higher in America. Among them are that doctors are greedy, record keeping is inefficient and malpractice costs are too high. Maybe all of these things are true. Whatever the cause, the disparity with other developed nations remains staggering, and it still is not entirely explained.

If helping the average American household, which brings in about $50,000 a year before taxes — and has brought in only that much for about 10 years — is supposed to be part of the resurrection of the U.S. economy, then a collar on medical costs is essential to an improvement in consumer spending. Even with insurance, how many families can afford to even pay a part of $28,000?

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.