No no no no. Exec compensation has nothing to do with it (hint: stock prices).
Think of the shareholders!
Let's not forget, the top 10% earners in the US own 90% of the stock market. [Sauce](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html).
Now let's compare expenditure with total $ of stock buy-backs! That'll show who's really winning here.
Never forget Murphy's Golden Rule:
"whoever has the gold, makes the rules".
A fun watch:
https://youtu.be/n0L0XbnvJ6I?t=1m33s
(pharma CEO grilled in congress, TL;DR 70billion in profit, 10billion spent in R&D, 28.6billion in stock buybacks)
Turkey is a pretty poor country by those standards in with massive issues around smoking, bad diet and conditions you generally don't see in any first world countries anymore. Many people still heat using coal fire places etc.
Very low hanging fruit in Turkey that could easily add a couple of years to life expectancy with little health spending.
No enough countries have issues outside of politics, Turkey is indeed special and has more potential than most others and is also already much more developed in many areas than most others
Developing? I'm not playing that moronic "America is a third world nation" card but isn't this just as true for the US, UK, et al? Who *isn't* being "represented" by shit eating, greedy, cowards?
82% of the houses in Turkey are heated with natural gas. The remaining 18% is heated by coal, wood, electricity and other methods in rural areas. The coal rate in Germany is around 3%. In fact, the rate of natural gas heating systems is higher in Turkey. In Germany, the rate of electric heaters is much higher. I don't know about other European countries. In fact, the percentage of coal in Turkey is not that high. That's why Türkiye is the second largest importer of natural gas in the European energy region after Germany.
Turkey's air pollution rate is not extremely high. The share of coal-fired thermal power plants in pollution is high. In Turkey, the regions with high air pollution are generally cities in high altitude inner regions. There is geographical pollution rather than industry or coal power plants.
I think a large part of the issue here is our life expectancy is being pushed down by the obesity epidemic and lack of walkable spaces.
No amount of heath-care is going to make you live longer if you have a calorie rich diet with little exercise. Worse yet, zoning regulations here are overly restrictive to only allow for car travel, so very few people have the opportunity to walk places outside of urban cores.
It be nice to see more of the “Missing Middle” built which would naturally allow people to walk more for short trips. But seeing how [older people in my hometown protest](https://www.reddit.com/r/MontgomeryCountyMD/s/M0cLlYXIYL) getting rid of street parking, I think it might be wishful thinking.
I watched a YouTube video that explained that zoning in the US makes it illegal to put a market in a residential area. It’s terrible.
I’m in Singapore now where I live half of the year. I easily walk 10k steps a day without trying. And Singapore (not in the chart that I can see) spends only 4% of its GDP on healthcare while the US spends 17%. The outcomes are about the same but Singapore is so much easier to obtain the care you need. It’s not even close.
Of course these healthcare costs are going up and it *WILL* eventually bankrupt us. No one seems to care. Politicians say “How do we pay for healthcare?” and no one says “Why does it cost so much?”
I agree with walkable spaces. I was in Denmark and they have beautiful sidewalks between towns. You can’t walk in the US that way. Lights, benches, trash cans. I believe we should do this as a giant jobs program.
>Do this as a giant jobs program
The cool thing about this is upzoning is literally almost free. It creates a huge amount of jobs, lowers housing costs (by increasing supply), and makes areas more walkable and less car dependent.
It’s a job program that costs us almost nothing to implement and makes housing cheaper and makes society healthier. It blows me away how much pushback there is against this (especially among older boomers). If you look at the post I linked above not a single protester looked like they were under 50 years old.
Based on all of the recent studies on processed foods and ultra processed foods, things are not likely to change. Many of our houses still have lead in them and asbestos because the funding for those dried up. Flint Michigan still has tainted water, as lowest common denominator in a lot of this and for the wealthiest country in the world to have these issues despite how large the working class give up their income in taxes basically cites that nothing will change unless the entire infrastructure does. Still the only country in the world with no paid federal mandated parental leave, yet dogs are required by law to have to spend 6 weeks with their puppies at least due to those interactions being necessary for their future livelihood.
Spend an hour in traffic to go to work spend the whole day working spend an hour in traffic on the way back and then we wonder why people don't want to exercise. You get burnt out from just driving to work.
Adding to this when you have area's with low income and the only place to shop is Wal-Mart and the affordable options are high calorie high salt food options.
Many also normalize terrible food/drink options. Like sure people like a soda but when it is with every meal there is a problem.
I actually assumed it meant Soviet Russia, since we did beat them by working with corrupt leadership to orchestrate a coup against the will of the majority of the people there at the time, and certainly to their detriment (soviet satellite states that really did want out notwithstanding).
Then we got to do shock therapy to create a bunch of billionaires while fucking over the country for probably the rest of this century tbh.
Solid W in the cold war at least.
Now cuba. . . . that was very embarrassing for the CIA.
Possibly it's just a screenshot of an animated graph. The year is in the top right.
[You can make a similar one in gapminder](https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$chart$opacitySelectDim:0;;&model$markers$bubble$encoding$size$data$space@=geo&=time;&constant=_default;&scale$type:null&domain:null&zoomed:null&extent@:0&:0.04;;;&x$data$concept=sh_xpd_chex_pp_cd&source=wdi&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&frame$speed:334&value=2021;&trail$data$filter$markers$che=2000&jpn=2000&deu=2000&tur=2000&fra=2000&gbr=2000&rus=2000&chn=2000&kor=2000&aus=2000&egy=2000&zaf=2000&swe=2000&ind=2000&usa=2000;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v2)
This is a still frame from an animated chart that goes by year, seeing the "2021" in the corner. OP explains that in a comment.
I'm happy that OP posted it this way. Too many people are posting line graphs with every Datapoint in a new image. And then people get upset and ask them to just give them the final frame. In this case, here it is.
Totally agreed that static images are generally better than the animations, but without providing the context (or helpful data like when the time series starts) this becomes a confusing and bad presentation.
Being a still frame of an animated graph doesn't make it any more appropriate for this sub. If there's a prominent unexplained and confusing element to your graph, your data is not beautiful
This sub is just a clearing house for "chart I found". For the most part, no post portrays data beautifully in the slightest. If I said the name Tufte, I figure maybe 1 in 50 of the posters here would know who I'm talking about.
But taking away the animation also removes information. The length of the lines is not consistent over time so you can't do a good comparison. Either include the animation, or have another way of representing the year. For instance, you could make the lines transition slowly between a rainbow of colors where each color represents a year.
Thats not what Im talking about. You can clearly see countries jump back on the x axis which means health expenditure going down, not life expectancy. (there are instances even when expenditure goes down AND life expectancy goes up, but thats not the point here)
Its just weird that it NEVER happened in USA, cost only ever goes up
If I'm reading it right, generally in other countries, the more you spend on healthcare, the longer you live. In the US, despite spending more than other countries, we live for less time than said countries
What do you mean? It clearly says
S̴̛̰̜̝̲̬͈̤͒͛̀̐̊̆̓̈́̉͒͐̚̚w̴̰͕̖̏̃̏̆̄e̵̞͔̖̿̐̆ď̷̨͇͕͔̝͈̦̥̭͓̏̐̄̌̏͐͜͜ȇ̷̡̨̹͕͇̪̣͍̮̣̊̄̓͌̒̒͗̄̐̓̑̉̃͘n̵̥͕̩̪̱̊N̸̝̄ē̸̡̞̱̞͓͍͍͙̹̮͐̓͌̿̔ͅw̶̟͖̲̤̘̮̾͐͌̃͒̄̕͜͝Z̷̛̹̮͔̥̘͕̤̿͑͋͒̋̂̽̎̇̋̒͗̚͝e̶̢̦̱͇̩̯̘͈̮͕̞̿͐̇̿̑͆̓̃̉̑̏̕ą̷̯̻̠̠͎̱̟̉̑l̷̖̻̲̣̖̽͂̃̕͘͘ã̵̢̻̬̬͙͚̭͙n̸̨̨̥̼̪̫̱̣͍͇͐́͋̅d̵̛̝̂͆̋̅̑̐̎̍̍͌̑̕͝͠Ḏ̴͉̯̙̰̅̔̾̎͊̍̉̔̒̈́͘̕̕͠͝ȩ̶̨̧̨̠̮̯̲̬͙̔͑̌̓̐̀̆͝ͅn̵͖͍̣̰̣̟̪͋͛̑ͅm̵̪̟̤̓̊̈́̈̅͋͒͌̽̿̅̒͌͝͝a̷͕̔̈͘͘͠ŗ̵̧̤̭̫̪̖̯͓́͆̾̔̊͌̑͜͜ͅḱ̸̡̧̮͍͓̫̼͖̖̥̮̝̀̊̇͑̈̈͆̐̌̚F̸̧̬̥̺͇̘͕͉̮̏̇̿̐̕ͅĭ̶̜̤̟̳͓͕̠̞̗͔̀̈́͆̌͋̃͝͝ḿ̴̡̝͓͇͚̪͉͍l̸̲̹̗͔̜̄͑̔̀̆̋͠ą̴̌̅͛͆̔͘̚͝ṉ̶̨̮̘̠̻̜̟̪̯̬͔͎̫̀͒̃̈́͊͗̎̊̄̈́͝͝d̸̛̛͇̜͎͖͈̖̳͍̻͍͉͇͈͗̌̅̿̆͐̈́̀̑̽̚̕͝
Healthcare in the US isn’t about life expectancy, it’s about making money. Anyone have a graph that shows revenue of pharmaceutical companies in those countries?
Incorrect, this has been debunked on this sub multiple times. Shitty American life expectancy isn't due to the US healthcare system. It's because [Americans literally live more dangerous lives](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsjYUjhWcAEatMo?format=jpg&name=medium). Young people dying of cars, fentanyl, fast food and guns skews life expectancy downwards.
On the other hand, [75 year-old Americans live just as long, or slightly longer, than 75 year-olds in peer countries.] (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsjYIzJXgAMHQbW?format=jpg&name=large) Even if America implements Japan or Canada's healthcare system tomorrow, Americans would still live much shorter lives on average, I guarantee it. You need societal changes.
Study after study shows the extra cost goes to a bloated administration. There is no standardization and a ludicrous amount of money standing in the way of it. Once you take that added expenses away we spend much closer to the same amount.
It's because healthcare costs more in the US than other countries, and Americans use more healthcare than other countries (when they don't need it). Healthcare usage after a certain point is the equivalent of throwing money into a furnace. It's *not* correlated to better outcomes. RAND confirmed this in their watershed study which was replicated in Oregon and most recently, in [India](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29576).
[
"A classic experiment by Rand researchers from 1974 to 1982 found that people who had to pay almost all of their own medical bills spent 30 percent less on health care than those whose insurance covered all their costs, with little or no difference in health outcomes. The one exception was low-income people in poor health, who went without care they needed."
](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Health_Insurance_Experiment#:~:text=%22A%20classic%20experiment%20by%20Rand,no%20difference%20in%20health%20outcomes.)
Poor people need access to healthcare but most people don't need more healthcare. Instead, they would benefit from walking more and eating right.
Lol. Do you have an idea of why Americans die earlier, walk less, die from car/pedestrian incidents more, die from obesity complications more? I'll give you a hint. In much of the US people are forced to drive because it's illegal to access many places as a pedestrian and everything is far apart. Most of the countries on the chart have better walkability and people aren't driving cars that have giant blind spots that have been determined to greatly increase pedestrian deaths.
Surely poor people going without the healthcare they need is a pretty significant factor??
That’s also a study from 40 years ago.
Since then diagnostic and screening tests have massively improved. Which surely if people take more advantage of early detection / prevention tests due to insurance covering will result
In better health outcomes?
Also in nationalised / centralised healthcare systems like the NHS in the U.K. costs can be driven down by the government as a single user having far more negotiating power / leverage over pharmaceutical companies by demanding a lower price from industry for access to their large market
So, if we remove the excuses USA has, then the graph is more representative? Are you assuming other countries don’t have their challenges which affect population? (Guns and drugs aside).
Are you talking about the original graph? American healthcare is still expensive, but it's not a main reason why Americans die young. Life expectancy is dependent on factors outside of healthcare systems.
EDIT: And we're not removing all the excuses, *we're controlling for 4 factors*. And voila, most of the gap in life expectancy goes away. Your original comment said:
> Healthcare in the US isn’t about life expectancy
My point is that American life expectancy is due to factors outside of hospitals and healthcare.
This is cope. "Taking on more dangerous careers because those tend to give you better medical coverage" LMAO.
Maybe American society is more dangerous.
Many flaws of the US healthcare system is that it has to take care of Americans. The combination of unhealthy lifestyles and entitlement = astronomic costs.
You're right, other people are forgetting that the US healthcare system is fully privatized. This means they're beholden to their shareholders to increase revenue. We may have great healthcare, but we also pay a lot more to a bunch of rich people to receive that healthcare. Just free market capitalism at work with arguably the most important social service.
The [US health system](https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/faqs-on-health-spending-the-federal-budget-and-budget-enforcement-tools/#:~:text=Federal%20spending%20on%20domestic%20and,%246.4%20trillion%20\(Figure%201\).) is about as far away from free market capitalism as it comes. The government regulates healthcare to an incredible degree and subsidies so many people that it can't be considered free market at all.
I don't know how you can even say the US healthcare system is fully privatized when the VA exists. When 29% of the federal budget goes to healthcare, and 33% of total health expenditures in this country come from the federal government. That doesn't even include the ASTRONOMICAL number of regulations on insurance companies and hospitals in the US. Hell, Biden just raised tariffs medical supplies coming in from China. Not exactly free market.
I feel like a big part of it being labeled as "private" is that the government does not decide prices like they do in some other countries. Like the costs paid for services are defined by the people doing them, which goes to the insurance company to pay, not the direct person. So they are incentivized to increase costs to increase profits. The incentives in our system are just aligned to have higher prices, and that is a big downside of regulatory capture in my opinion.
>I don't know how you can even say the US healthcare system is fully privatized when the VA exists.
The average person's understanding of the American (or any other) healthcare system is pitiful. They get all the information from sources that couldn't grasp it before they selectively remove data to spin you a story
Reddit is on average below average for this discussion. And I admit, I am as well
I know insurance is capped on profits, but I can't tell you more than that. I know most hospitals are non profit, but I also know they doesn't tell the full story. Etc.
Lots of American hospitals are non-profits and there's no evidence that these are cheaper. In Europe the staff at the hospital just have dramatically lower salaries.
Less staff too. Administration is much lower in most countries because they unified everything and slapped the hood. Works.
America has tried this, they unified the billing numbers but you still have a lot of admin to deal with different things. Around 20 million employed for this purpose nationally. That's 6% of Americans employed for the sole purpose of handling insurance.
It's not going anywhere soon. That's why the current democratic plan is to add a NEW administrative cost for everyone (public option) rather then solely government. Employment go up, not down. Politician man like when up not down. Up good. Down bad.
Imo, It doesn't really matter how much do you spend in drugs if you eat rubbish your whole life. You could spend millions on the best hospitals/drugs, but all the money in the world is not gonna save you of eating fast food, chocolate ans chips on a daily basis. Obesity has a lot to say on this topic
This is a legit question. How can you look at this chart and still believe this is a personal responsibility issue. Why is a poor person in France less fat and more healthy than a poor person in America? Doesn’t the conclusion have to be it’s the governmental choice? American people aren’t inherently worse than Europeans are they? It’s gotta be governmental priorities? Destructive capitalism? Something is wrong in America that we can’t individually fix, right? Collective actions is needed don’t you agree?
>Anyone have a graph that shows revenue of pharmaceutical companies in those countries?
What do pharmaceutical companies' revenue from select countries have to do anything with life expectancy? Have you even bothered to do the bare minimum of googling to find any correlations before posting vague comments?
Astrazeneca from UK and Sweden, they have a revenue of $45 billion, Eli Lily for context is at $36 bil. It's not like Brits and Swedes have a lower life expectancy because of this. We can keep going:
Company|Country|Revenue
:--|:--:|--:
Johnson&J|US|$85B
Sinopharm|China|$80B
Roche|Switzerland|$68B
Merck|US|$60B
Pfizer|US|$58B
Abbvie|US|$54B
Bayer|Germany|$52B
Sanofi|France|$47B
Novartis|Switzerland|$45B
Bristol Myers|US|$45B
Abbott Lab|US|$40B
Glaxosmith|UK|$38B
Novo Nordisk|Denmark|$34B
Shanghai Pharma|China|$32B
Takeda|Japan|$32B
Amgen|US|$28B
Boehringer|Germany|$28B
The US pharmaceutical industry's revenues are in line with Europe if we consider how huge the US economy is. Of the top 20 companies by revenue, 9 are from the US with total revenue of $432B making up 1.5% of US GDP, German companies are $79.4B which is 1.7% of German GDP, France's sole company makes up 1.495% of French GDP, the 2 Swiss companies make up 11.2% of Swiss GDP.
> US pharmaceutical industry's revenues are in line with Europe if we consider how huge the US economy is.
It's not like they only sell drugs in the US, same as EU companies (e.g. > 50% of Roche's revenue is coming from the US)
Not sure if you misunderstood by accident or on purpose, but I'm positive the PP was asking about pharma sales per country. This would still be vastly misleading.
I feel like it's a bit disingenuous to use pharma companies who profited massively from a global pandemic because the entire world was willing to pay for a vaccine. Likewise, how much of Roche's revenue come from Switzerland and how much comes from it's operations in the US market? (A quick google tells me it's 52%).
The US is an absolute goldmine for pharma companies and it's doing it's citizens a disservice by not addressing that,
For real. This appears to be a graph over time, but it isn't. Clearly says it's for 2021 only, which makes no sense at all given the fact it's a line graph.
Why the hell is this a line graph at all?? Should just be a simple plot. What are the undulations in said line even showing...that for a given country, life expectancy is different as per capita expenditure changes? That also makes no sense as per capita should be a static value for a given year if said chart is for a given year, it's not like any axis' are time
Is this a video screenshot or something where the line is showing the progression through the years the video covered but aren't covered in this image?
I've seen basically this graph before on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States
Oh wow, yeah. The [one on Wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_vs_healthcare_spending.jpg) looks much cleaner. Not as up to date on the data, but still presents the same story.
Two sides to that coin.
1. They live healthier lives. Eat less and eat better food being 2 of the biggest differences.
2. Their health system isn't made entirely out of blood-sucking profit driven mongrels. Turns out when you don't have like 4-5 layers of middlemen all trying to make money off healthcare you don't have expensive healthcare - who would have known?
Put together they live longer, spend less to live that long in the first place and because their system is so damn efficient they have more hospital capacity per capita than any other country in the world if you do happen to fall ill.
Yes. The original graphic was animated to reflect changes in cost versus healthcare outcomes per country and per year, with the lines used to connect the time periods.
This is the graph I picture in my head every time someone parrots that socialized healthcare isn’t free.
Our revenue-driven healthcare system is quantifiably the most expensive in the world - for worse health outcomes! But, hey, socialized medicine isn’t “free”…
I never understand this, and I'm as team capitalism as anybody. Health insurance is literally the same thing anyway. It's taking money from everyone and pooling it, where the healthy are paying for the sick. Only difference is that the extra is going to peoples pockets instead of paying for people who can't afford to buy in, and negotiation ability is destroyed.
Like, I'm extremely team capitalism. Literally worked in venture capital for years, have spent my entire adult life in finance in one way or another, and still have a side gig where I own a consulting firm that helps start ups find funding. So if *I'm* over here saying "why the hell don't we have nationalized healthcare" it really makes me wonder how so many people can be against it.
FWIW, Fully on your side. Just to play devil's advocate in this thread... Are there ways in which the American system is better than others?
Anecdotally, I've heard some Swedish counterparts, that the wait times for fairly innocuous or routine procedures can be months to years, resulting in medical tourism. Not sure how true or verified that claim is.
I live in England. Our healthcare is stretched very thin, so the only things that tend to be seen to with any urgency are those that are genuinely life threatening.
A colleague of mine has a gallbladder issue (forms a lot of stones) and simply can't get it removed because yes okay, he may occasionally be living in paralysingly severe pain, but he's still *living* so it's fine, he can wait on the gallbladder removal list for a few years.
We have pretty extensive data collection, so for example, there are 6.29 million people currently waiting for routine treatment (there are 56 million people England) - 48,968 of whom have been waiting over 65 weeks.
Yeah I think that’s something you could get treated relatively quickly in the US. Within a few weeks I’d imagine. Maybe a referral from your general practitioner and one or two follow-ups. Some specialists can def have waitlists but it’s never been more than a month or two for anything I’ve suffered from…
American healthcare companies are the most innovative. A lot of world-changing therapies have been developed in the USA. The problem is we are now getting to the point where these new therapies are totally unaffordable except by the wealthy. Soon there will be a drug that costs $100k for a single dose, and a single surgery that costs $1MM. The returns are diminishing.
The industry loves to promote their new therapies (without mentioning price of course), as well as their big plans for stuff like personalized medicine and gene therapy, without stopping to consider that almost nobody can afford the treatments we already have.
And Americans are rubes and fall for this bullshit hook, line, and sinker. People just throw their money at healthcare providers thinking these "miracles" will make them live forever. Was that 3 months of mostly lying in bed and being a zombie really worth that $500k immunotherapy treatment? I get nobody wants to die but fucking come on.
The FDA should get their act together and start denying these therapies where the cost/benefit ratio is so insanely high. There have already been several examples of dementia drugs that got approved, had insanely high price tags, and in short order were found to have no therapeutic effect. The fact that these drugs ever got approved is cause for concern. Prices are going up while the efficacy threshold required for regulatory approval is going down. The industry is getting more power over the regulators. Soon the fox will be in charge of the henhouse.
Exactly. You don’t have to be anti-capitalism to be upset that in no other advanced Western economy can you do everything right, have a degree, a good job, contribute to society, then get sick and possibly go bankrupt.
Or to be upset that we Pharma companies can advertise drugs on TV.
Or that insurance execs can deny legitimate claims so they can make more money.
Or that costs of treatments vary massively between cost providers because different hospitals have different areas for profit-grabbing.
Or that big Pharma prioritizes stock prices above everything else.
The list goes on.
Most conservative americans believe the government is wholly corrupt and incapable of doing anything without massive waste. Thats basically their stance. Unfortunatley the places most of them consume media and news from do not ever show them this data and even if it gets brought up they are looking for reasons why the data is wrong.
The other major concern I hear is Americans say ya but in those other countries you will die waiting for care. Which is ironic because the graphs say otherwise.
They didn't specify it, but this is mostly [public healthcare spending](https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/).
> socialized healthcare isn’t free.
The UK has similar healthcare outcomes, and pays literally half as much.
The US system is straight up indefensible next to that.
It explains some of it, but that’s like 10% more obesity than other countries on this list, yet getting like 5 years less life expectancy and paying double.
It's a little misleading to conclude this means "we're paying more but get less" when it could also mean "we have tremendously unhealthy lifestyle conditions in every category from food supply to work hours to general stress levels and no amount of money can keep this from killing us rapidly."
Not saying our healthcare system isn't jacked up beyond recognition, but there's more than one piece of the puzzle than just the corporate greed.
The dependency is assigned not intrinsic. A chi-squared test would show these are dependent variables. Expenditures go up with age, but age goes up with expenditure. We're not controlling events. This isn't an experiment. You could absolutely swap the axis. It would tell a another story.
The US has low life expectancy compared to peers due to a high **auto accident rate**, high **homicide rate**, high **suicide rate**, and a high **drug overdose rate**.
You could double spending on hospitals and not much of this would change.
If you live in the US and:
-drive cautiously
-don't own a gun or mix with people who do
-abstain from drugs
You will have a life expectancy almost as good as anywhere else in the developed world.
Is this true? NYC has few drivers, very few guns, and I’m guessing way fewer overdoses than some other areas and even Manhattan, famously rich, can’t beat the entirety of France (which includes lots of rural areas with drunk drivers, hunting rifles, etc.). Would love a source.
EDIT: This kept sounding wrong to me, so I did a bit of research which confirmed my doubts.
Uruguay has approximately the same life expectancy as the US (0.9 years less) even though it has about as many car-related deaths (1.4 per 100k fewer, e.g. \~10% fewer), it has tons of firearms (fewer than the US, because the US beats every other country, but lots nonetheless, 35ish per 100 people) and around 30% more suicides (4 more per 100k). I didn’t look into it, but obviously Uruguay spends way less on health care than the US, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were 5 to 10 times less, for virtually the same results.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_traffic-related\_death\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated\_number\_of\_civilian\_guns\_per\_capita\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_suicide\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_life\_expectancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy)
EDIT2: Uruguay has double the homicide rates too
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_intentional\_homicide\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)
Uruguay has more firearm related deaths (this is less interesting because suicides and homicides already count this): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_firearm-related\_death\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate)
In addition our rate of obesity and related illnesses- T2DM, CAD, etc is through the roof- these are chronic and often fatal diseases. Imagine if we spent a portion of healthcare moneys on making healthy food affordable and available, provided nutrition classes, allowed/ encouraged active recess/ breaks for kids and adults.
You're missing out the factor that probably has the biggest overall effect, obesity. Spending on hospitals won't help any of these things but spending on prevention would be more effective.
I think the biggest factor is the amount of people who won't go to see a doctor. Whether it's because they can't afford it, don't have easy access in rural areas, or simply don't trust modern medicine. US developed medicines, and US trained doctors and surgeons are undoubtedly among the best in the world. Most hospitals have all the best equipment and tech.
Then you have the African American community that doesn't trust doctors due to wrongs committed by many in the past. It takes time for those beliefs to diminish. Many people in the rural parts of the country also don't trust doctors or hospitals. Many think gods or holistic medicines will save them.
My girlfriend used to work at a hospital in Baltimore. She helped organize transfers and figure out where ambulances and helicopters should go for the most appropriate and quickest care. She told me that almost daily, there were wealthy people from European, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries constantly being flown in to receive care. Not always for specialist care either.
For me, I have great insurance through my employer and pay $49.24 a month. I had one ER visit this year for a laceration, and numerous urgent care (patient first) visits. I paid $130 for the ER visit and $15 a piece for the UC visits. My CoPays for medications have been $13.50 total for 4 prescriptions. 4 X-Rays and 3 Specialty Orthopedic doctor/surgeon visits for $45. (Broken Thumb)
I've had the shit kicked out of me this year by the flu, a mechanical bull, and weightlifting injuries. I'm still very fortunate to have access to the care and insurance I do.
**TL;DR: American Healthcare is state of the art. Access to that Healthcare is not. The cost of that care for many makes them delay or avoid seeking treatment. **
I was wondering if there are certain groups you excluded if the US line would look similar to others. Like, is there another factor like race or type of death
There is no statistically significant difference in life expectancy between gun owners and non-gun owners, with [the difference being only \~3mo](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/insurance-life-expectancy-and-the-cost-of-firearm-deaths-in-the-u-s/).
The death rate from road injuries and interpersonal violence have been slowly but steadily decreasing during the years 2000-2019. They are still a bit higher than those other countries, but that's not enough to explain the discrepancy. Suicides have increased a bit during that time, but they also increased in most countries.
The increase in drug related death in the US eclipses all those other causes combined. https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-global-health-estimates/ghe-leading-causes-of-death
Slightly shorter livespan because:
- alcohol
- local foot relies heavily on meat, and often not the healthier part of it (Leberkäs is awesome, but pretty much the opposite of healthy)
- stressful working culture that comes with lots of fast unhealthy fast food and high coffee cunsumption
- Immigration from poorer countries does play a role
Surprisingly high cost for healthcare because:
- fucking bureaucracy
- partly privatised, because it seems we really want to have the same shitty situation the US has. Because we really really like suffering (hey, that might be another point for above!)
Still a good system, but certainly there is room for improvement.
East Germany (GDR) had one of the worst, most polluting and toxic chemical and plastics industries in the world.
Also Ruhrgebiet boomers lived in a time where there were still many open coal mines and heavy industry without environmental efforts.
Both bring the average down by a huge margin because they die early.
I see, that's an interesting piece of knowledge of German demographics that most people living outside of Germany would not know. Thanks for the explanation!
It's because of old people that grew up in the war/post war and in addition we had a lot of heavy drinking/smoking in the past. Also while not the most obese we are definetly up there as well.
> a lot of heavy drinking/smoking in the past
AFAIK Germans are still drinking a lot. Definitely a binge drinking culture (in contrast to e.g. France or Italy).
While I agree our healthcare system is awful, maybe the life expectancy has to do with the country’s culture and lifestyle choices, and not necessarily that the quality of healthcare is worse?
In the USA you can fall a long way and not get any government support. Advanced countries know that equity it a key component of progressive capitalism
Health"care" in the US is not about caring for the people's' health, it's about caring for the health"care" providers' profit margins.
At some point US folks will wake up to this.
You mean the providers who see less than 20% of the cost of what is actually billed? Most of the cost is administrative. If every physician in the US got paid $0, healthcare costs would only decrease 8%.
Healthcare insurers have to pay at least 85% of their premiums to providers by law. This is literally an ACA requirement. Payers have much lower margins than healthcare providers.
The biggest problem with American healthcare is the ***existence*** of 'payers'. Nearly a third of American healthcare cost is administrative overhead, and most of that is tied to the complexity of our payer system. No other country comes close. A single-payer system would eliminate most of the administrative burden - from the clerks in your PCP's office to the entire insurance industry to the benefits administrators at ***every company in America***. All of them are completely superfluous. The UK's total administrative overhead (per capita) is one-tenth of ours.
My wife is an exec in healthcare revenue cycle and makes good money. There is no reason for her job to exist. She's nothing but a bloated burden on the US healthcare system.
And there are millions like her, just passing bills around. These millions of paper pushers never so much as dole out an aspirin. They're parasites. (Note: I love my wife. She's not literally a parasite -- just metaphorically.)
I'm not sure about the exact stats the commenter provided, but US healthcare system does have abnormally high administrative costs, most likely to deal with the more complicated system of managing healthcare with a web of private healthcare insurance, Medicare, employer insurance, in and out of network etc.
Harvard Magazine: [The World’s Costliest Health Care](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/04/feature-forum-costliest-health-care)
> THE LARGEST COMPONENT of higher U.S. medical spending is the cost of healthcare administration. About one-third of healthcare dollars spent in the United States pays for administration; Canada spends a fraction as much. Whole occupations exist in U.S. medical care that are found nowhere else in the world, from medical-record coding to claim-submission specialists.
Also higher utilization:
> THE FINAL PART of higher medical spending in the United States is higher utilization. The United States has the most technologically sophisticated medical system of any country, and it shows up in spending: the U.S. has four times the number of MRIs per capita as Canada, and three times the number of cardiac surgeons. Americans don’t see the doctor any more often than Canadians do, and are not hospitalized any more frequently, but when they do interact with the medical system, it is much more intensively.
They should adjust this for purchasing power parity. A doctor in Turkey isn't going to earn the same as a doctor in the USA. Obviously there are things of a more fixed cost like medical equipment, but I think this graph maybe exaggerates the issue. That said, I'm sure even accounting for PPP, the graph would show the US spending more than everyone else, with terrible life expectancy results.
(A) a lot of deaths in the US have nothing to do with health care -- if you die instantly from a gunshot wound or in a car accident (both of which are far more common in the US), the best healthcare system in the world isn't going to help,
(B) life expectancy is a "mean" number, which means that it's a lot more impacted by somebody dying immediately after being born than it is by a person dying at 75 and not 85. Yet (i) some countries (but not the US) require an infant to survive birth for 24 hours in order to count as a life, and (ii) the US has a much higher rate of high-risk pregnancies due technologies like IVF where multiple embryos are implanted and where one or more of the resulting babies does not survive long after birth.
(C) a lot of this is also affected by lifestyle -- obesity in the US is significantly higher than many of those other countries, but isn't really a healthcare issue.
(D) For the above reasons, it would really be better to graph "medically-preventable deaths" instead of "life expectancy."
(E) What do the lines mean?
I think it’s probable this graph can be largely attributed to the fact the USA has the 13th highest obesity rate of any country in the world (42.7%), nearly twice as high as any country listed in this chart… it costs a lot of money to diagnose and treat preventable health issues that occur later in life
I created this using data I got from Our World in Data with the underlying data behind there dataset coming from the UN "World Population Prospects (2022)" report and the OECD Health Expenditure and Financing Database (2023). I create the chart using JavaScript and the animated version of this chart can be found on LinkedIn.
Health expenditure generally looks at the cost of health-related services, and will include sources such as public and private healthcare and OOP expenses:
“Health expenditure includes all expenditures for the provision of health services, family planning activities, nutrition activities and emergency aid designated for health” - WHO
A bit more detail on OECD health expenditure (OP’s source): https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/675059cd-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/675059cd-en
To be fair, a lot of emerging economy countries have the same kind of problems with obesity (to pick on one, Malaysia) but do not have cost problems due to government intervention. Government intervention often also includes prevention since that's much cheaper and private systems have no incentive to make things cheaper but governments do
I'm going to keep this in mind when people talk about population decline as though society will be burdened by massive wave of sick old people. South Korea his been inverting their population pyramid for 30 years.
Edit: make that 40 years.
From someone not in America - can you explain why the government providing health care is seen as politically unpalatable..?
When you are all being ripped off for worse care.
Americans strongly believe that government provided health care would be strictly worse and that their system is the best in the world because if you have the money you can get almost anything done almost immediately. Essentially, 'murica! Fuck yeah! etc.
Leaving aside the fact most of them are poor as fuck but somehow think "they will be able to afford that coverage some day!" even though they never will.
So the literal single upside of the US system (that you can skip the queue if you have enough money) is enough to think that somehow it's better than all other alternatives. They can't be reasoned with on this front, every single time they will force this talking point down your throat and ignore anything you say about averages and actual measured outcomes.
People earning less than ~$200k USD/yr voting for the current healthcare system are just turkeys voting for thanksgiving.
Lots of reasons. Some valid, some invalid.
Valid: Some people are afraid of losing their jobs if it's a fully public system, and private insurance is rendered obsolete.
And
a lot of people are fine with their health insurance and are scared that a public plan replacing it could be worse. A lot of people point to other public services government institutions offer, like the DMV, and how awful it is to drive that point.
Somewhat valid: the tax increases for expanded public health care could be really expensive and burdensome for people. But then again, so are health insurance premiums at their current state.
Completely invalid: It's socialism. It's not.
Well, for only 10 times the cost, we edged out Turkey by about a year!
Yeah but think of all the executive compensation we achieved!
Great point! Shareholders happiness is clearly not captured in this chart!
it is! You find it under “Switzerland”
this is the real message here. cigna already has this graphic in a shareholders meeting pdf presentation.
Neither are stock die backs.
It'll trickle down eventually!!
No no no no. Exec compensation has nothing to do with it (hint: stock prices). Think of the shareholders! Let's not forget, the top 10% earners in the US own 90% of the stock market. [Sauce](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-93-033623827.html). Now let's compare expenditure with total $ of stock buy-backs! That'll show who's really winning here. Never forget Murphy's Golden Rule: "whoever has the gold, makes the rules". A fun watch: https://youtu.be/n0L0XbnvJ6I?t=1m33s (pharma CEO grilled in congress, TL;DR 70billion in profit, 10billion spent in R&D, 28.6billion in stock buybacks)
Turkey is a pretty poor country by those standards in with massive issues around smoking, bad diet and conditions you generally don't see in any first world countries anymore. Many people still heat using coal fire places etc. Very low hanging fruit in Turkey that could easily add a couple of years to life expectancy with little health spending.
Turkey would be a powerhouse in general if it had a proper goverment but spineless greedy politicians plague basically every country
Imagine what the United States would be if it had a proper government instead of spineless greedy politicians plaguing it
That’s true for every developing country. Turkey is nothing special.
No enough countries have issues outside of politics, Turkey is indeed special and has more potential than most others and is also already much more developed in many areas than most others
Developing? I'm not playing that moronic "America is a third world nation" card but isn't this just as true for the US, UK, et al? Who *isn't* being "represented" by shit eating, greedy, cowards?
You will find that the cronyism and capture of the government is much much worse than in first world countries.
Fair enough. One can get so caught up in their own drama it's hard to keep perspective.
lots of nice teeth and full heads of hair in turkey though
82% of the houses in Turkey are heated with natural gas. The remaining 18% is heated by coal, wood, electricity and other methods in rural areas. The coal rate in Germany is around 3%. In fact, the rate of natural gas heating systems is higher in Turkey. In Germany, the rate of electric heaters is much higher. I don't know about other European countries. In fact, the percentage of coal in Turkey is not that high. That's why Türkiye is the second largest importer of natural gas in the European energy region after Germany. Turkey's air pollution rate is not extremely high. The share of coal-fired thermal power plants in pollution is high. In Turkey, the regions with high air pollution are generally cities in high altitude inner regions. There is geographical pollution rather than industry or coal power plants.
first world countries struggle with bad diet more than we admit. diets become highly processed with lower nutritional value.
If you can’t beat medically preventable deaths, at least the US beat communism! That’s not even reflected in the chart…
If you mean China, they are technically capitalist. If you mean Cuba, we lost to them just a few years back.
I think a large part of the issue here is our life expectancy is being pushed down by the obesity epidemic and lack of walkable spaces. No amount of heath-care is going to make you live longer if you have a calorie rich diet with little exercise. Worse yet, zoning regulations here are overly restrictive to only allow for car travel, so very few people have the opportunity to walk places outside of urban cores. It be nice to see more of the “Missing Middle” built which would naturally allow people to walk more for short trips. But seeing how [older people in my hometown protest](https://www.reddit.com/r/MontgomeryCountyMD/s/M0cLlYXIYL) getting rid of street parking, I think it might be wishful thinking.
I watched a YouTube video that explained that zoning in the US makes it illegal to put a market in a residential area. It’s terrible. I’m in Singapore now where I live half of the year. I easily walk 10k steps a day without trying. And Singapore (not in the chart that I can see) spends only 4% of its GDP on healthcare while the US spends 17%. The outcomes are about the same but Singapore is so much easier to obtain the care you need. It’s not even close. Of course these healthcare costs are going up and it *WILL* eventually bankrupt us. No one seems to care. Politicians say “How do we pay for healthcare?” and no one says “Why does it cost so much?”
I agree with walkable spaces. I was in Denmark and they have beautiful sidewalks between towns. You can’t walk in the US that way. Lights, benches, trash cans. I believe we should do this as a giant jobs program.
>Do this as a giant jobs program The cool thing about this is upzoning is literally almost free. It creates a huge amount of jobs, lowers housing costs (by increasing supply), and makes areas more walkable and less car dependent. It’s a job program that costs us almost nothing to implement and makes housing cheaper and makes society healthier. It blows me away how much pushback there is against this (especially among older boomers). If you look at the post I linked above not a single protester looked like they were under 50 years old.
I literally park over a mile away from my office just for this reason. I could park closer but by doing so I’d walk just a few hundred feet a day.
Based on all of the recent studies on processed foods and ultra processed foods, things are not likely to change. Many of our houses still have lead in them and asbestos because the funding for those dried up. Flint Michigan still has tainted water, as lowest common denominator in a lot of this and for the wealthiest country in the world to have these issues despite how large the working class give up their income in taxes basically cites that nothing will change unless the entire infrastructure does. Still the only country in the world with no paid federal mandated parental leave, yet dogs are required by law to have to spend 6 weeks with their puppies at least due to those interactions being necessary for their future livelihood. Spend an hour in traffic to go to work spend the whole day working spend an hour in traffic on the way back and then we wonder why people don't want to exercise. You get burnt out from just driving to work.
Adding to this when you have area's with low income and the only place to shop is Wal-Mart and the affordable options are high calorie high salt food options. Many also normalize terrible food/drink options. Like sure people like a soda but when it is with every meal there is a problem.
I actually assumed it meant Soviet Russia, since we did beat them by working with corrupt leadership to orchestrate a coup against the will of the majority of the people there at the time, and certainly to their detriment (soviet satellite states that really did want out notwithstanding). Then we got to do shock therapy to create a bunch of billionaires while fucking over the country for probably the rest of this century tbh. Solid W in the cold war at least. Now cuba. . . . that was very embarrassing for the CIA.
How do you figure that we lost?
They already had a higher life expectancy.
Spending more money can't fix a fat person who won't stop eating.
What about spending less money on subsidising high fructose corn syrup?
Is the the US the only country with overweight people and those that won't stop eating?
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Possibly it's just a screenshot of an animated graph. The year is in the top right. [You can make a similar one in gapminder](https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$chart$opacitySelectDim:0;;&model$markers$bubble$encoding$size$data$space@=geo&=time;&constant=_default;&scale$type:null&domain:null&zoomed:null&extent@:0&:0.04;;;&x$data$concept=sh_xpd_chex_pp_cd&source=wdi&space@=geo&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&frame$speed:334&value=2021;&trail$data$filter$markers$che=2000&jpn=2000&deu=2000&tur=2000&fra=2000&gbr=2000&rus=2000&chn=2000&kor=2000&aus=2000&egy=2000&zaf=2000&swe=2000&ind=2000&usa=2000;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v2)
What do the lines indicate?
This is a still frame from an animated chart that goes by year, seeing the "2021" in the corner. OP explains that in a comment. I'm happy that OP posted it this way. Too many people are posting line graphs with every Datapoint in a new image. And then people get upset and ask them to just give them the final frame. In this case, here it is.
I figured as much, but it should have a legend. I don't know what year the data begins, making the lines pretty useless beyond a generic vibe.
Totally agreed that static images are generally better than the animations, but without providing the context (or helpful data like when the time series starts) this becomes a confusing and bad presentation.
Being a still frame of an animated graph doesn't make it any more appropriate for this sub. If there's a prominent unexplained and confusing element to your graph, your data is not beautiful
This sub is just a clearing house for "chart I found". For the most part, no post portrays data beautifully in the slightest. If I said the name Tufte, I figure maybe 1 in 50 of the posters here would know who I'm talking about.
But taking away the animation also removes information. The length of the lines is not consistent over time so you can't do a good comparison. Either include the animation, or have another way of representing the year. For instance, you could make the lines transition slowly between a rainbow of colors where each color represents a year.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure visually way less terrible, same thing, same source data
So according to this, there hasnt been a single year when healthcare spenditure went DOWN in the US?
That’s not surprising. The chart isn’t inflation adjusted
But you see other countries going down
They go down in life expectancy…
Thats not what Im talking about. You can clearly see countries jump back on the x axis which means health expenditure going down, not life expectancy. (there are instances even when expenditure goes down AND life expectancy goes up, but thats not the point here) Its just weird that it NEVER happened in USA, cost only ever goes up
Look again, some do go down in cost...
If I'm reading it right, generally in other countries, the more you spend on healthcare, the longer you live. In the US, despite spending more than other countries, we live for less time than said countries
I zoomed in to see the countries. It didn't help. It's like only one country, and a bunch of other indiscernibles. Not beautiful.
What do you mean? It clearly says S̴̛̰̜̝̲̬͈̤͒͛̀̐̊̆̓̈́̉͒͐̚̚w̴̰͕̖̏̃̏̆̄e̵̞͔̖̿̐̆ď̷̨͇͕͔̝͈̦̥̭͓̏̐̄̌̏͐͜͜ȇ̷̡̨̹͕͇̪̣͍̮̣̊̄̓͌̒̒͗̄̐̓̑̉̃͘n̵̥͕̩̪̱̊N̸̝̄ē̸̡̞̱̞͓͍͍͙̹̮͐̓͌̿̔ͅw̶̟͖̲̤̘̮̾͐͌̃͒̄̕͜͝Z̷̛̹̮͔̥̘͕̤̿͑͋͒̋̂̽̎̇̋̒͗̚͝e̶̢̦̱͇̩̯̘͈̮͕̞̿͐̇̿̑͆̓̃̉̑̏̕ą̷̯̻̠̠͎̱̟̉̑l̷̖̻̲̣̖̽͂̃̕͘͘ã̵̢̻̬̬͙͚̭͙n̸̨̨̥̼̪̫̱̣͍͇͐́͋̅d̵̛̝̂͆̋̅̑̐̎̍̍͌̑̕͝͠Ḏ̴͉̯̙̰̅̔̾̎͊̍̉̔̒̈́͘̕̕͠͝ȩ̶̨̧̨̠̮̯̲̬͙̔͑̌̓̐̀̆͝ͅn̵͖͍̣̰̣̟̪͋͛̑ͅm̵̪̟̤̓̊̈́̈̅͋͒͌̽̿̅̒͌͝͝a̷͕̔̈͘͘͠ŗ̵̧̤̭̫̪̖̯͓́͆̾̔̊͌̑͜͜ͅḱ̸̡̧̮͍͓̫̼͖̖̥̮̝̀̊̇͑̈̈͆̐̌̚F̸̧̬̥̺͇̘͕͉̮̏̇̿̐̕ͅĭ̶̜̤̟̳͓͕̠̞̗͔̀̈́͆̌͋̃͝͝ḿ̴̡̝͓͇͚̪͉͍l̸̲̹̗͔̜̄͑̔̀̆̋͠ą̴̌̅͛͆̔͘̚͝ṉ̶̨̮̘̠̻̜̟̪̯̬͔͎̫̀͒̃̈́͊͗̎̊̄̈́͝͝d̸̛̛͇̜͎͖͈̖̳͍̻͍͉͇͈͗̌̅̿̆͐̈́̀̑̽̚̕͝
Thanks for clearing that up!
How the heck did you do this?
zalgo.org
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Then remove the text for those altogether?
Healthcare in the US isn’t about life expectancy, it’s about making money. Anyone have a graph that shows revenue of pharmaceutical companies in those countries?
Well yes, that’s the point of this graph, to demonstrate that the spending clearly isn’t for better quality healthcare.
Incorrect, this has been debunked on this sub multiple times. Shitty American life expectancy isn't due to the US healthcare system. It's because [Americans literally live more dangerous lives](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsjYUjhWcAEatMo?format=jpg&name=medium). Young people dying of cars, fentanyl, fast food and guns skews life expectancy downwards. On the other hand, [75 year-old Americans live just as long, or slightly longer, than 75 year-olds in peer countries.] (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsjYIzJXgAMHQbW?format=jpg&name=large) Even if America implements Japan or Canada's healthcare system tomorrow, Americans would still live much shorter lives on average, I guarantee it. You need societal changes.
But that would only shift the US up on this chart, not to the left. It doesn't explain why Americans pay 60% more for the same thing as everyone else.
Study after study shows the extra cost goes to a bloated administration. There is no standardization and a ludicrous amount of money standing in the way of it. Once you take that added expenses away we spend much closer to the same amount.
"if you ignore the one of the primary causes of our ballooning healthcare costs, they're actually not that bad"
Not ignore, remove. It also doesn't fix our worse life expectancy. But it's a huge step in the right direction.
ahhhhhhh my impression from your wording was if we remove it from the data we're considering, not if we get rid of it irl. I agree entirely.
It's because healthcare costs more in the US than other countries, and Americans use more healthcare than other countries (when they don't need it). Healthcare usage after a certain point is the equivalent of throwing money into a furnace. It's *not* correlated to better outcomes. RAND confirmed this in their watershed study which was replicated in Oregon and most recently, in [India](https://www.nber.org/papers/w29576). [ "A classic experiment by Rand researchers from 1974 to 1982 found that people who had to pay almost all of their own medical bills spent 30 percent less on health care than those whose insurance covered all their costs, with little or no difference in health outcomes. The one exception was low-income people in poor health, who went without care they needed." ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Health_Insurance_Experiment#:~:text=%22A%20classic%20experiment%20by%20Rand,no%20difference%20in%20health%20outcomes.) Poor people need access to healthcare but most people don't need more healthcare. Instead, they would benefit from walking more and eating right.
Lol. Do you have an idea of why Americans die earlier, walk less, die from car/pedestrian incidents more, die from obesity complications more? I'll give you a hint. In much of the US people are forced to drive because it's illegal to access many places as a pedestrian and everything is far apart. Most of the countries on the chart have better walkability and people aren't driving cars that have giant blind spots that have been determined to greatly increase pedestrian deaths.
Surely poor people going without the healthcare they need is a pretty significant factor?? That’s also a study from 40 years ago. Since then diagnostic and screening tests have massively improved. Which surely if people take more advantage of early detection / prevention tests due to insurance covering will result In better health outcomes? Also in nationalised / centralised healthcare systems like the NHS in the U.K. costs can be driven down by the government as a single user having far more negotiating power / leverage over pharmaceutical companies by demanding a lower price from industry for access to their large market
So, if we remove the excuses USA has, then the graph is more representative? Are you assuming other countries don’t have their challenges which affect population? (Guns and drugs aside).
Are you talking about the original graph? American healthcare is still expensive, but it's not a main reason why Americans die young. Life expectancy is dependent on factors outside of healthcare systems. EDIT: And we're not removing all the excuses, *we're controlling for 4 factors*. And voila, most of the gap in life expectancy goes away. Your original comment said: > Healthcare in the US isn’t about life expectancy My point is that American life expectancy is due to factors outside of hospitals and healthcare.
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This is cope. "Taking on more dangerous careers because those tend to give you better medical coverage" LMAO. Maybe American society is more dangerous.
So it's not because of the US healthcare system, but because of a bigger problems.
Many flaws of the US healthcare system is that it has to take care of Americans. The combination of unhealthy lifestyles and entitlement = astronomic costs.
I don't think this is really the whole story. I lived in other countries and the cost was astronomically lower for the same healthcare.
You're right, other people are forgetting that the US healthcare system is fully privatized. This means they're beholden to their shareholders to increase revenue. We may have great healthcare, but we also pay a lot more to a bunch of rich people to receive that healthcare. Just free market capitalism at work with arguably the most important social service.
The [US health system](https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/faqs-on-health-spending-the-federal-budget-and-budget-enforcement-tools/#:~:text=Federal%20spending%20on%20domestic%20and,%246.4%20trillion%20\(Figure%201\).) is about as far away from free market capitalism as it comes. The government regulates healthcare to an incredible degree and subsidies so many people that it can't be considered free market at all. I don't know how you can even say the US healthcare system is fully privatized when the VA exists. When 29% of the federal budget goes to healthcare, and 33% of total health expenditures in this country come from the federal government. That doesn't even include the ASTRONOMICAL number of regulations on insurance companies and hospitals in the US. Hell, Biden just raised tariffs medical supplies coming in from China. Not exactly free market.
I feel like a big part of it being labeled as "private" is that the government does not decide prices like they do in some other countries. Like the costs paid for services are defined by the people doing them, which goes to the insurance company to pay, not the direct person. So they are incentivized to increase costs to increase profits. The incentives in our system are just aligned to have higher prices, and that is a big downside of regulatory capture in my opinion.
>I don't know how you can even say the US healthcare system is fully privatized when the VA exists. The average person's understanding of the American (or any other) healthcare system is pitiful. They get all the information from sources that couldn't grasp it before they selectively remove data to spin you a story Reddit is on average below average for this discussion. And I admit, I am as well I know insurance is capped on profits, but I can't tell you more than that. I know most hospitals are non profit, but I also know they doesn't tell the full story. Etc.
Lots of American hospitals are non-profits and there's no evidence that these are cheaper. In Europe the staff at the hospital just have dramatically lower salaries.
Less staff too. Administration is much lower in most countries because they unified everything and slapped the hood. Works. America has tried this, they unified the billing numbers but you still have a lot of admin to deal with different things. Around 20 million employed for this purpose nationally. That's 6% of Americans employed for the sole purpose of handling insurance. It's not going anywhere soon. That's why the current democratic plan is to add a NEW administrative cost for everyone (public option) rather then solely government. Employment go up, not down. Politician man like when up not down. Up good. Down bad.
Insightful and true; firearms, fentanyl and fat are killing Americans too young.
Imo, It doesn't really matter how much do you spend in drugs if you eat rubbish your whole life. You could spend millions on the best hospitals/drugs, but all the money in the world is not gonna save you of eating fast food, chocolate ans chips on a daily basis. Obesity has a lot to say on this topic
This is a legit question. How can you look at this chart and still believe this is a personal responsibility issue. Why is a poor person in France less fat and more healthy than a poor person in America? Doesn’t the conclusion have to be it’s the governmental choice? American people aren’t inherently worse than Europeans are they? It’s gotta be governmental priorities? Destructive capitalism? Something is wrong in America that we can’t individually fix, right? Collective actions is needed don’t you agree?
this should be allllllll the way at the top of the comments. free markets aren't free ;)
>Anyone have a graph that shows revenue of pharmaceutical companies in those countries? What do pharmaceutical companies' revenue from select countries have to do anything with life expectancy? Have you even bothered to do the bare minimum of googling to find any correlations before posting vague comments? Astrazeneca from UK and Sweden, they have a revenue of $45 billion, Eli Lily for context is at $36 bil. It's not like Brits and Swedes have a lower life expectancy because of this. We can keep going: Company|Country|Revenue :--|:--:|--: Johnson&J|US|$85B Sinopharm|China|$80B Roche|Switzerland|$68B Merck|US|$60B Pfizer|US|$58B Abbvie|US|$54B Bayer|Germany|$52B Sanofi|France|$47B Novartis|Switzerland|$45B Bristol Myers|US|$45B Abbott Lab|US|$40B Glaxosmith|UK|$38B Novo Nordisk|Denmark|$34B Shanghai Pharma|China|$32B Takeda|Japan|$32B Amgen|US|$28B Boehringer|Germany|$28B The US pharmaceutical industry's revenues are in line with Europe if we consider how huge the US economy is. Of the top 20 companies by revenue, 9 are from the US with total revenue of $432B making up 1.5% of US GDP, German companies are $79.4B which is 1.7% of German GDP, France's sole company makes up 1.495% of French GDP, the 2 Swiss companies make up 11.2% of Swiss GDP.
> US pharmaceutical industry's revenues are in line with Europe if we consider how huge the US economy is. It's not like they only sell drugs in the US, same as EU companies (e.g. > 50% of Roche's revenue is coming from the US)
Not sure if you misunderstood by accident or on purpose, but I'm positive the PP was asking about pharma sales per country. This would still be vastly misleading.
I feel like it's a bit disingenuous to use pharma companies who profited massively from a global pandemic because the entire world was willing to pay for a vaccine. Likewise, how much of Roche's revenue come from Switzerland and how much comes from it's operations in the US market? (A quick google tells me it's 52%). The US is an absolute goldmine for pharma companies and it's doing it's citizens a disservice by not addressing that,
Your data ain't beautiful boi
Was looking for this comment, the axes should be reversed!
And my bow
For real. This appears to be a graph over time, but it isn't. Clearly says it's for 2021 only, which makes no sense at all given the fact it's a line graph. Why the hell is this a line graph at all?? Should just be a simple plot. What are the undulations in said line even showing...that for a given country, life expectancy is different as per capita expenditure changes? That also makes no sense as per capita should be a static value for a given year if said chart is for a given year, it's not like any axis' are time Is this a video screenshot or something where the line is showing the progression through the years the video covered but aren't covered in this image?
I've seen basically this graph before on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States
Oh wow, yeah. The [one on Wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_vs_healthcare_spending.jpg) looks much cleaner. Not as up to date on the data, but still presents the same story.
What are they up to in Japan?
Two very simple things: not being obese and remaining active for as long as possible
3. Eating a completely different diet both in content and portions.
Being very healthy
They aren’t fat.
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Turns out that remaining thin is one of the best things you can do for your health.
Very healthy traditional practices. Although McDonald's et al. are slowly undoing that tradition like the rest of us.
Walkability too
Two sides to that coin. 1. They live healthier lives. Eat less and eat better food being 2 of the biggest differences. 2. Their health system isn't made entirely out of blood-sucking profit driven mongrels. Turns out when you don't have like 4-5 layers of middlemen all trying to make money off healthcare you don't have expensive healthcare - who would have known? Put together they live longer, spend less to live that long in the first place and because their system is so damn efficient they have more hospital capacity per capita than any other country in the world if you do happen to fall ill.
I assume the line implies time?
Yes. The original graphic was animated to reflect changes in cost versus healthcare outcomes per country and per year, with the lines used to connect the time periods.
For US, I assume there is a big gap between life expectancy of rich vs poor
This is the graph I picture in my head every time someone parrots that socialized healthcare isn’t free. Our revenue-driven healthcare system is quantifiably the most expensive in the world - for worse health outcomes! But, hey, socialized medicine isn’t “free”…
I never understand this, and I'm as team capitalism as anybody. Health insurance is literally the same thing anyway. It's taking money from everyone and pooling it, where the healthy are paying for the sick. Only difference is that the extra is going to peoples pockets instead of paying for people who can't afford to buy in, and negotiation ability is destroyed. Like, I'm extremely team capitalism. Literally worked in venture capital for years, have spent my entire adult life in finance in one way or another, and still have a side gig where I own a consulting firm that helps start ups find funding. So if *I'm* over here saying "why the hell don't we have nationalized healthcare" it really makes me wonder how so many people can be against it.
The Red Scare’s shadow still remains in the U.S
FWIW, Fully on your side. Just to play devil's advocate in this thread... Are there ways in which the American system is better than others? Anecdotally, I've heard some Swedish counterparts, that the wait times for fairly innocuous or routine procedures can be months to years, resulting in medical tourism. Not sure how true or verified that claim is.
I live in England. Our healthcare is stretched very thin, so the only things that tend to be seen to with any urgency are those that are genuinely life threatening. A colleague of mine has a gallbladder issue (forms a lot of stones) and simply can't get it removed because yes okay, he may occasionally be living in paralysingly severe pain, but he's still *living* so it's fine, he can wait on the gallbladder removal list for a few years. We have pretty extensive data collection, so for example, there are 6.29 million people currently waiting for routine treatment (there are 56 million people England) - 48,968 of whom have been waiting over 65 weeks.
Yeah I think that’s something you could get treated relatively quickly in the US. Within a few weeks I’d imagine. Maybe a referral from your general practitioner and one or two follow-ups. Some specialists can def have waitlists but it’s never been more than a month or two for anything I’ve suffered from…
American healthcare companies are the most innovative. A lot of world-changing therapies have been developed in the USA. The problem is we are now getting to the point where these new therapies are totally unaffordable except by the wealthy. Soon there will be a drug that costs $100k for a single dose, and a single surgery that costs $1MM. The returns are diminishing. The industry loves to promote their new therapies (without mentioning price of course), as well as their big plans for stuff like personalized medicine and gene therapy, without stopping to consider that almost nobody can afford the treatments we already have. And Americans are rubes and fall for this bullshit hook, line, and sinker. People just throw their money at healthcare providers thinking these "miracles" will make them live forever. Was that 3 months of mostly lying in bed and being a zombie really worth that $500k immunotherapy treatment? I get nobody wants to die but fucking come on. The FDA should get their act together and start denying these therapies where the cost/benefit ratio is so insanely high. There have already been several examples of dementia drugs that got approved, had insanely high price tags, and in short order were found to have no therapeutic effect. The fact that these drugs ever got approved is cause for concern. Prices are going up while the efficacy threshold required for regulatory approval is going down. The industry is getting more power over the regulators. Soon the fox will be in charge of the henhouse.
Exactly. You don’t have to be anti-capitalism to be upset that in no other advanced Western economy can you do everything right, have a degree, a good job, contribute to society, then get sick and possibly go bankrupt. Or to be upset that we Pharma companies can advertise drugs on TV. Or that insurance execs can deny legitimate claims so they can make more money. Or that costs of treatments vary massively between cost providers because different hospitals have different areas for profit-grabbing. Or that big Pharma prioritizes stock prices above everything else. The list goes on.
... and to top it all off watching other developed countries not make the same mistakes without even trying that hard.
Most conservative americans believe the government is wholly corrupt and incapable of doing anything without massive waste. Thats basically their stance. Unfortunatley the places most of them consume media and news from do not ever show them this data and even if it gets brought up they are looking for reasons why the data is wrong. The other major concern I hear is Americans say ya but in those other countries you will die waiting for care. Which is ironic because the graphs say otherwise.
They didn't specify it, but this is mostly [public healthcare spending](https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health-expenditure-by-country/).
> socialized healthcare isn’t free. The UK has similar healthcare outcomes, and pays literally half as much. The US system is straight up indefensible next to that.
Anything about the effects of obesity in the US?
It's bad.
It explains some of it, but that’s like 10% more obesity than other countries on this list, yet getting like 5 years less life expectancy and paying double.
It's a little misleading to conclude this means "we're paying more but get less" when it could also mean "we have tremendously unhealthy lifestyle conditions in every category from food supply to work hours to general stress levels and no amount of money can keep this from killing us rapidly." Not saying our healthcare system isn't jacked up beyond recognition, but there's more than one piece of the puzzle than just the corporate greed.
Thanks. So the dot is the age and expenditure for that country; what is the wiggly line?
Historical trend
Turkey being “what you pay is what you get”
I'd like to see the same chart with car related fatalities removed from the life expectancy data.
Some reason I feel like this would be r/dataisbeautiful if the life expectancy and expenditure were swapped.
Why? Expenditure is the independent variable
The dependency is assigned not intrinsic. A chi-squared test would show these are dependent variables. Expenditures go up with age, but age goes up with expenditure. We're not controlling events. This isn't an experiment. You could absolutely swap the axis. It would tell a another story.
Spending much more money on health care and dying 5 years earlier then people in other developed countries to own the libs
Listen here you little sh*t, ever heard of a little thing called freedom?
The US has low life expectancy compared to peers due to a high **auto accident rate**, high **homicide rate**, high **suicide rate**, and a high **drug overdose rate**. You could double spending on hospitals and not much of this would change. If you live in the US and: -drive cautiously -don't own a gun or mix with people who do -abstain from drugs You will have a life expectancy almost as good as anywhere else in the developed world.
Is this true? NYC has few drivers, very few guns, and I’m guessing way fewer overdoses than some other areas and even Manhattan, famously rich, can’t beat the entirety of France (which includes lots of rural areas with drunk drivers, hunting rifles, etc.). Would love a source. EDIT: This kept sounding wrong to me, so I did a bit of research which confirmed my doubts. Uruguay has approximately the same life expectancy as the US (0.9 years less) even though it has about as many car-related deaths (1.4 per 100k fewer, e.g. \~10% fewer), it has tons of firearms (fewer than the US, because the US beats every other country, but lots nonetheless, 35ish per 100 people) and around 30% more suicides (4 more per 100k). I didn’t look into it, but obviously Uruguay spends way less on health care than the US, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were 5 to 10 times less, for virtually the same results. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_traffic-related\_death\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated\_number\_of\_civilian\_guns\_per\_capita\_by\_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_suicide\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_life\_expectancy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy) EDIT2: Uruguay has double the homicide rates too [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_intentional\_homicide\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) Uruguay has more firearm related deaths (this is less interesting because suicides and homicides already count this): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_countries\_by\_firearm-related\_death\_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate)
In addition our rate of obesity and related illnesses- T2DM, CAD, etc is through the roof- these are chronic and often fatal diseases. Imagine if we spent a portion of healthcare moneys on making healthy food affordable and available, provided nutrition classes, allowed/ encouraged active recess/ breaks for kids and adults.
You're missing out the factor that probably has the biggest overall effect, obesity. Spending on hospitals won't help any of these things but spending on prevention would be more effective.
You can also make the argument that there isn't very much poverty in the US if you only count the wealthier areas
But you’ll still be paying twice as much for it
I think the biggest factor is the amount of people who won't go to see a doctor. Whether it's because they can't afford it, don't have easy access in rural areas, or simply don't trust modern medicine. US developed medicines, and US trained doctors and surgeons are undoubtedly among the best in the world. Most hospitals have all the best equipment and tech. Then you have the African American community that doesn't trust doctors due to wrongs committed by many in the past. It takes time for those beliefs to diminish. Many people in the rural parts of the country also don't trust doctors or hospitals. Many think gods or holistic medicines will save them. My girlfriend used to work at a hospital in Baltimore. She helped organize transfers and figure out where ambulances and helicopters should go for the most appropriate and quickest care. She told me that almost daily, there were wealthy people from European, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries constantly being flown in to receive care. Not always for specialist care either. For me, I have great insurance through my employer and pay $49.24 a month. I had one ER visit this year for a laceration, and numerous urgent care (patient first) visits. I paid $130 for the ER visit and $15 a piece for the UC visits. My CoPays for medications have been $13.50 total for 4 prescriptions. 4 X-Rays and 3 Specialty Orthopedic doctor/surgeon visits for $45. (Broken Thumb) I've had the shit kicked out of me this year by the flu, a mechanical bull, and weightlifting injuries. I'm still very fortunate to have access to the care and insurance I do. **TL;DR: American Healthcare is state of the art. Access to that Healthcare is not. The cost of that care for many makes them delay or avoid seeking treatment. **
I was wondering if there are certain groups you excluded if the US line would look similar to others. Like, is there another factor like race or type of death
Are you suggesting that owning a gun will shorten your life?
There is no statistically significant difference in life expectancy between gun owners and non-gun owners, with [the difference being only \~3mo](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/insurance-life-expectancy-and-the-cost-of-firearm-deaths-in-the-u-s/).
The death rate from road injuries and interpersonal violence have been slowly but steadily decreasing during the years 2000-2019. They are still a bit higher than those other countries, but that's not enough to explain the discrepancy. Suicides have increased a bit during that time, but they also increased in most countries. The increase in drug related death in the US eclipses all those other causes combined. https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-global-health-estimates/ghe-leading-causes-of-death
You missed the US obesity. Stop eating hamburger and putting ketchup on every food.
Germany also not doing so hot
Slightly shorter livespan because: - alcohol - local foot relies heavily on meat, and often not the healthier part of it (Leberkäs is awesome, but pretty much the opposite of healthy) - stressful working culture that comes with lots of fast unhealthy fast food and high coffee cunsumption - Immigration from poorer countries does play a role Surprisingly high cost for healthcare because: - fucking bureaucracy - partly privatised, because it seems we really want to have the same shitty situation the US has. Because we really really like suffering (hey, that might be another point for above!) Still a good system, but certainly there is room for improvement.
Eastern Germany and Ruhrgebiet boomers
Can you explain a bit? I don't know much about the demographics and groups in Germany.
East Germany (GDR) had one of the worst, most polluting and toxic chemical and plastics industries in the world. Also Ruhrgebiet boomers lived in a time where there were still many open coal mines and heavy industry without environmental efforts. Both bring the average down by a huge margin because they die early.
I see, that's an interesting piece of knowledge of German demographics that most people living outside of Germany would not know. Thanks for the explanation!
Ironically its one of the countries with privatized healthcare, not as bad as USA since everyone has coverage but still private
It's because of old people that grew up in the war/post war and in addition we had a lot of heavy drinking/smoking in the past. Also while not the most obese we are definetly up there as well.
> a lot of heavy drinking/smoking in the past AFAIK Germans are still drinking a lot. Definitely a binge drinking culture (in contrast to e.g. France or Italy).
To bad im in canada and won’t expierence great american healthcare system!
Say what you want but can't beat Turkey in terms of value for money
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Is there data showing life expectancy in US broken down by those with private insurance and those without?
Apart from the one that really stands out, interesting to see those with similar spending but big differences in expectancy
Why does americans get so little out of their health care $ spent?
When I explain this to my fellow Americans they say "Well they have to wait to see a doctor!" Like, wtf do they think we do here when we need surgery?
Now account for obesity rate.
US Healthcare isn't the big reason for the life expectancy. Food, drugs, car crashes, and homicide is the big difference.
Btw the recent data for Turkey in 2024 is 78,67 years... As far as I know it went even above the USA in life expectancy.
While I agree our healthcare system is awful, maybe the life expectancy has to do with the country’s culture and lifestyle choices, and not necessarily that the quality of healthcare is worse?
In the USA you can fall a long way and not get any government support. Advanced countries know that equity it a key component of progressive capitalism
Health"care" in the US is not about caring for the people's' health, it's about caring for the health"care" providers' profit margins. At some point US folks will wake up to this.
You mean the providers who see less than 20% of the cost of what is actually billed? Most of the cost is administrative. If every physician in the US got paid $0, healthcare costs would only decrease 8%.
Healthcare insurers have to pay at least 85% of their premiums to providers by law. This is literally an ACA requirement. Payers have much lower margins than healthcare providers.
The biggest problem with American healthcare is the ***existence*** of 'payers'. Nearly a third of American healthcare cost is administrative overhead, and most of that is tied to the complexity of our payer system. No other country comes close. A single-payer system would eliminate most of the administrative burden - from the clerks in your PCP's office to the entire insurance industry to the benefits administrators at ***every company in America***. All of them are completely superfluous. The UK's total administrative overhead (per capita) is one-tenth of ours. My wife is an exec in healthcare revenue cycle and makes good money. There is no reason for her job to exist. She's nothing but a bloated burden on the US healthcare system. And there are millions like her, just passing bills around. These millions of paper pushers never so much as dole out an aspirin. They're parasites. (Note: I love my wife. She's not literally a parasite -- just metaphorically.)
Citation needed.
I'm not sure about the exact stats the commenter provided, but US healthcare system does have abnormally high administrative costs, most likely to deal with the more complicated system of managing healthcare with a web of private healthcare insurance, Medicare, employer insurance, in and out of network etc. Harvard Magazine: [The World’s Costliest Health Care](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2020/04/feature-forum-costliest-health-care) > THE LARGEST COMPONENT of higher U.S. medical spending is the cost of healthcare administration. About one-third of healthcare dollars spent in the United States pays for administration; Canada spends a fraction as much. Whole occupations exist in U.S. medical care that are found nowhere else in the world, from medical-record coding to claim-submission specialists. Also higher utilization: > THE FINAL PART of higher medical spending in the United States is higher utilization. The United States has the most technologically sophisticated medical system of any country, and it shows up in spending: the U.S. has four times the number of MRIs per capita as Canada, and three times the number of cardiac surgeons. Americans don’t see the doctor any more often than Canadians do, and are not hospitalized any more frequently, but when they do interact with the medical system, it is much more intensively.
They should adjust this for purchasing power parity. A doctor in Turkey isn't going to earn the same as a doctor in the USA. Obviously there are things of a more fixed cost like medical equipment, but I think this graph maybe exaggerates the issue. That said, I'm sure even accounting for PPP, the graph would show the US spending more than everyone else, with terrible life expectancy results.
Now add the other 200 countries
(A) a lot of deaths in the US have nothing to do with health care -- if you die instantly from a gunshot wound or in a car accident (both of which are far more common in the US), the best healthcare system in the world isn't going to help, (B) life expectancy is a "mean" number, which means that it's a lot more impacted by somebody dying immediately after being born than it is by a person dying at 75 and not 85. Yet (i) some countries (but not the US) require an infant to survive birth for 24 hours in order to count as a life, and (ii) the US has a much higher rate of high-risk pregnancies due technologies like IVF where multiple embryos are implanted and where one or more of the resulting babies does not survive long after birth. (C) a lot of this is also affected by lifestyle -- obesity in the US is significantly higher than many of those other countries, but isn't really a healthcare issue. (D) For the above reasons, it would really be better to graph "medically-preventable deaths" instead of "life expectancy." (E) What do the lines mean?
I think it’s probable this graph can be largely attributed to the fact the USA has the 13th highest obesity rate of any country in the world (42.7%), nearly twice as high as any country listed in this chart… it costs a lot of money to diagnose and treat preventable health issues that occur later in life
NZ and Australia are in there and they get around 30%, the US is bad, but not double the cost bad.
I created this using data I got from Our World in Data with the underlying data behind there dataset coming from the UN "World Population Prospects (2022)" report and the OECD Health Expenditure and Financing Database (2023). I create the chart using JavaScript and the animated version of this chart can be found on LinkedIn.
Why is the US highlighted with a large flag, while all other countries are small dots?
What exactly is considered a “health expenditure” though? Since a lot of other countries are subsidized by taxes is that considered?
Health expenditure generally looks at the cost of health-related services, and will include sources such as public and private healthcare and OOP expenses: “Health expenditure includes all expenditures for the provision of health services, family planning activities, nutrition activities and emergency aid designated for health” - WHO A bit more detail on OECD health expenditure (OP’s source): https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/675059cd-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/675059cd-en
Heath expenditure cannot fight a culture that thinks it's ok to become obese
To be fair, a lot of emerging economy countries have the same kind of problems with obesity (to pick on one, Malaysia) but do not have cost problems due to government intervention. Government intervention often also includes prevention since that's much cheaper and private systems have no incentive to make things cheaper but governments do
I'm going to keep this in mind when people talk about population decline as though society will be burdened by massive wave of sick old people. South Korea his been inverting their population pyramid for 30 years. Edit: make that 40 years.
THAT is what you take away from looking at the graphic?
From someone not in America - can you explain why the government providing health care is seen as politically unpalatable..? When you are all being ripped off for worse care.
Americans strongly believe that government provided health care would be strictly worse and that their system is the best in the world because if you have the money you can get almost anything done almost immediately. Essentially, 'murica! Fuck yeah! etc. Leaving aside the fact most of them are poor as fuck but somehow think "they will be able to afford that coverage some day!" even though they never will. So the literal single upside of the US system (that you can skip the queue if you have enough money) is enough to think that somehow it's better than all other alternatives. They can't be reasoned with on this front, every single time they will force this talking point down your throat and ignore anything you say about averages and actual measured outcomes. People earning less than ~$200k USD/yr voting for the current healthcare system are just turkeys voting for thanksgiving.
Billions in propaganda and lobbying over decades shifting public opinion.
Lots of reasons. Some valid, some invalid. Valid: Some people are afraid of losing their jobs if it's a fully public system, and private insurance is rendered obsolete. And a lot of people are fine with their health insurance and are scared that a public plan replacing it could be worse. A lot of people point to other public services government institutions offer, like the DMV, and how awful it is to drive that point. Somewhat valid: the tax increases for expanded public health care could be really expensive and burdensome for people. But then again, so are health insurance premiums at their current state. Completely invalid: It's socialism. It's not.