Socialized Health Care in the USA

[Jester]

You'd look at that and think so, but the people who built the graph are trying to make the same argument as you.

Well, yes. It's a pretty obvious argument to make. Health care spending generally leads to better outcomes, but you can spend a lot of money without necessarily getting the outcomes - the US being the obvious case.

In order to draw the conclusion that you do, you would need to examine if the hypothesis of applying more money per capita actually increased the "life expectancy". And, conversely, that in reducing the amount of money spent actually reduced the "life expectancy".

That isn't my hypothesis, it's just a basic fact that's tangental to my point. It can't be a one to one correlation, otherwise, my argument would make no sense, because the US should have the best health care outcomes in the world, bar none. You don't, and it's not even close. I'm not saying the US should increase health care spending to improve life expectancy. I'm saying the US should adopt a more efficient system to reduce costs and probably improve outcomes at the same time.

The graph, however, shows that the rule of thumb holds, contrary to your (strange) assertions otherwise: countries that spend more on health care are generally ones with better life expectancy. Culture plays a role, but it's abundantly clear that the big difference between (for instance) Egypt and Ireland is expenditures.

(Why is "life expectancy" in scare quotes?)

So for example, does Japan have a higher life expectancy due to the people there spending more dollars per year going to the doctor?

I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons. They have a well-functioning health care system. They are among the most equal societies in the world. They eat lots of fish and seaweed. They walk a lot. Karaoke burns calories. Who knows? But they're not exactly the exception to some kind of rule. Their outcomes are quite comparable to other countries', if a little bit better. But their costs are a fraction of the US' (as are everyone's.)

Where is the control group?

This is a rather naive statement. Where is the control group in any country-level data? Societies determine their policy on the basis of the costs and benefits for their people. They aren't laboratories. They don't separate their populations into groups and conduct controlled experiments on them. (Well, maybe in North Korea.)

Could we measure the number of visits, and the incidence of disease for comparison? Are there life style (healthy eating and exercise), and genetic factor differences that are measurable for comparison?

Sure. You can see where culture comes into the graph. (Genetic factors less so, I suspect that Asians and Africans who live like Americans are every bit as unhealthy.) The countries that are above the curve are those with generally healthier lifestyles (Japan, Singapore) and those below the curve are those with unhealthy ones, or where other factors like war are lowering lifespans. (USA, Iraq). But there is no country that spends gadrillions on its health care with a life expectancy of 50. The dollars are going somewhere and generally doing something.

I would examine Cuba as an outlier and determine what they do then that keeps them healthy without spending much money on health care at all. How much health care do they get, and who provides it?

Cuba is not a model that can be emulated. Costs are kept down by all sorts of methods, both good and bad. State control is absolute. Medical services are prioritised. Inequality is extremely low. Their government focuses almost obsessively on keeping health statistics up, seeing as it is both an ideological goal and a great propaganda tool.

But Cuba is a distraction. Look at countries more like the US. Look at Canada, the UK, Japan, Australia, and so on. They *all* get better results for not just a little less money, but a lot less.

-Jester