Once a week I’d like to post an image or infographic, without much commentary from myself, in hopes of evoking some discussion. I post lots of the random images and graphics and things I come across on my tumblr, but that’s not as conducive to discussion. I’ve seen this thing called “Wordless Wednesday” around the blogosphere, but I’ll probably be posting things with words usually. So, without further ado, here’s the first open discussion…
(From National Geographic, click to enlarge)
Seems we spend more and get less compared to some other nations.
Yeah, that's what the graphic would point to. I wonder what people's general take on this is. I mean, is life expectancy the best indicator of overall health? Do we really pay more then everyone else and get less? Is that a fact everyone agrees on or is it something that people question?
would want to know what that base these stats on first of all, and then go from there.
I wonder why people in the Czech Republic go to the doctor so much.
Ariah, I think you hit one of the main questions about this chart: does life expectancy = good healthcare? I honestly don't know, but my inclination would be towards the negative.
3 other thoughts:
1) It would be interesting to see how much of this spending is on research. I know it says "spending on care" but then it talks about hospital infrastructure, and what about clinical trials… people are receiving 'care' from that as well.
2) I think there could be some information in the distribution… there are people in the US who spend ten's of thousands to have their nose straightened. Then there are people who can't afford any healthcare at all… how does that compare with universal healthcare states? Are the people who are receiving the same services privately as they would publicly really penalized?
3) This is related to (2): population size can make a difference. It's very hard to perfectly replicate something that is going well for 1 person to 5-6 other people, yet this chart (unintentionally) reads that way. The US is more than twice the size of the next largest state on the chart (Japan) and 600 times larger than the smallest (Luxembourg).
Of course I'm not saying that our healthcare system isn't broken… I will readily agree to that, but I'm not really convinced by this type of data that universal healthcare is the way to go.
Thanks for making me think about my studies before classes start back up again, Ariah! 🙂
This is a telling graphic.
I think finding ways to ensure that all are able to have access to healthcare is important, but this really makes me wonder why the healthcare bill hasn't really done anything to address ways of lowering the costs of healthcare without needing to spend more and has only focused on the insurance companies. For instance, a unified method of billing insurance companies would lower doctor's administrative expenses. Tort reform on malpractice claims would not only lower costs of malpractice insurance, but it would allow doctors to give more efficient care because they wouldn't have to run unnecessary tests simply to cover their backs.
Health Insurance reform does need to take place to some degree, but it is not the sole cause of the skyrocketing costs.
Ariah-
I haven't had a ton of time to do a lot of snooping yet. Here is one blog by Greg Mankiw about physician costs as well as some analysis: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/06/physicians… I'll keep looking around, but I'm sure a lot of this information would be very costly (either time, privacy or financially).
Here is the article that Mankiw referenced. http://tinyurl.com/ye7hwfg. I don't have time to read it all the way through, but there were a few interesting points I noticed:
1) administrative costs are very high in the US. I'm not sure if they are much lower in other OECD countries or if some of those costs are absorbed by the government proper.
2) Healthcare is a luxury good: with every extra dollar we have, we'll spend more and more of it on healthcare. My question is then: why do we not see results in life expectancy? And we are back to your original question.
3) Why do we have a lot less people going to the hospital? Even if everyone who was uninsured did not go to the hospital, the numbers would still be more comparable than currently.
Fascinating. After experiencing Canada's health care first hand, I must say that I'm a fan of universal heath care. One point to note is that it does raise the general cost of living due to taxes, and this chart cannot attempt to acknowledge this. We have so much misinformation about universal coverage in the States. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience with Canada's health care. This is definitely an area I don't know much about, and don't pretend to, but have found it's difficult to find unbiased information.
Have you seen Sicko? It's that documentary by Michael Moore. Really interesting, and I haven't seen much of a rebuttal against it.
Lots of good questions and comments.
I can't substantiate this but I've heard it commented concerning the "life expectancy" numbers that we might be comparing apples and oranges. What I've been told is that the US is much more aggressive in trying to save premies than some other countries, and what would be termed a miscarriage elsewhere in the world is a live birth in the US. But when that premie doesn't make it, we count it as a death and that pulls our life expectancy numbers down.
We just have to be so careful of using numbers.
Susie,
I've heard similar comments in the past, but have never found any evidence to prove this line of reasoning. Honestly, I think it's a made up excuse following the "we're the best in the world" type logic many people have about the USA.
In my attempt to find some facts proving this, I've only found evidence that many of these stats are gathered by the WHO and CDC and international organizations that would control for those sorts of factors, thus further disproving this line of logic.
If you ever find some stats that show what your saying to be true I'd love to see them.
I just chased down one reference:
The tyranny of numbers: mismeasurement and misrule By Nicholas Eberstadt
If you go to google books and look it up, bottom of pg. 49 he starts to talk about infant mortality. I found this information referenced in several articles but with no citation, but just now found the source.
I'll keep looking for more info…
Susan, thanks, took me a while to find the right section, but I did. (google books)
Here is a snippet from the conclusion of that section, which seems almost inline with the chart above:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2777/4305038453_96…
This quote, while at first seeming to support the chart, doesn't. This quote is about infant mortality and the chart is about life expectancy–related but not the same. A small change in infant mortality numbers might make a big change in life expectancy numbers.
Just before this quote Eberstadt did agree that infant mortality is counted differently in different countries, as I had suspected.
My overall point, all ready noted in other comments, is that the quality of one's health care cannot be fully measured by life expectancy numbers. Too many other factors effect life expectancy, i.e., how deaths are counted in the very young, life style choices like obesity, diet and exercise, willingness to take responsibility for one's health…
And in agreement with many comments here, while the cost for health care in the US is startling, those numbers aren't clear either, so many factors coming into play.
Eberstadt's book did intrigue me so I ordered a used copy. It was good to look into getting more info on the topic. Glad you raised it.
Good point.
Let me know what else you learn from the book, I'm curious what new perspectives and insight it lends you.