International comparison
of health care costs and performance metrics
Life expectancy and infant mortality
vs. total health spending as a percentage of GDP.
Data plots are from here and here.
Circle areas are proportional to population.
I found this surprising.
See also:
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Some of the results are because if you live an unhealthy lifestyle and do not have the best genetics then it will be very expensive to keep you healthy.
To rate healthcare, there would have to be correction or standardization for lifestyle, income and ethinicity factors.
Some of this also means that if there were effective programs to actually get people to exercise more and eat better and not smoke and not drink to excess then it would be cheaper to get people to live longer.
Similar behavior and health management issues would be a cheaper way to impact infant mortality. ie . get healthier pregnant women who do the things that will help ensure better chances for a good delivery
Is the data equal across reporting countries?
Some of this also means that if there were effective programs to actually get people to exercise more and eat better and not smoke and not drink to excess then it would be cheaper to get people to live longer.
Make everyone rich, that’ll do it.
I don’t know what an effective program in the United States would look like: everyone _knows_ eating lard and sitting around all day is bad for is not healthy.
I cannot imagine any kind of ‘program’ that would get people in the US to do what they already know they need to do.
Well, social pressure would work: it’s working to eliminate smoking.
@ Brian — Yes, the underlying lifestyle-related health status of a population should be taken into account in making comparisons. A further complicating factor, however, is the influence of prevention-oriented health care systems on life style (I have no idea how large this is).
The “make everyone rich” comment is spot on.
I’m convinced the two biggest differences between scandinavia and USA on this area are these;
First, we’ve got universal-healthcare, single-provider universal-coverage.
But second, and I think more important, we’re a lot more egalitarian, our GINI-numbers are a lot lower. Average income isn’t very different (slightly higher than USA for Norway, slightly lower for Sweden), but the *distribution* is radically different.
Basically, we don’t have a large very-poor underclass. Those people live unhealthy lifestyles, and contribute a lot to USA scoring poorly on such statistics. (the same group is a major factor in your sky-high teenage-pregnancy-rate, for example)
I don’t have the source handy, but saw an observation/claim recently that if you exclude gunshot wounds and car crashes, the US is #1 in life expectancy, even over Japan et al. An exciting lifestyle has certain costs, apparently. ;)
Second, the %GDP numbers are suspect, even fudged. France, e.g., has a Social Service department whose mandate is almost entirely health care, and consumes ~22% of GDP. The 12% figure is a “massaged” number used by WHO for P.R. purposes.
What’s with the site’s clock function? I posted the above about 5 minutes ago, which was 4:25 am PST, UTC-8, or 12:25 pm UTC. The 5:25 am UTC timestamp would be MST, UTC-7.
Brian, you raise important questions, and I’ve been looking more closely at other sources.
I think I’ve identified the source for the statistics that you referred to in your first point. The Wall Street Journal Health Blog discusses the topic in a post on “Violence, Traffic Accidents and U.S. Life Expectancy”. The post links to an OECD document that includes the corrections you mention, and puts the U.S. in 17th place, not first.
Regarding your second point, I’d be surprised to see a number for French spending that remotely approaches 22%, and if it were close to correct, I’d expect to see the WHO statistics and methodology widely ridiculed. The OECD gives statistics similar to WHO, and I doubt they have any strong bias in this matter.
— and thanks for the heads-up on the clock; I’ve fixed it.