Here are the 2009 OECD data it's in an Excel file here.
Per capita health care costs normed for US currency (2008). the top five spenders:
- $6,933 – USA
- $4,507 – Norway
- $4,165 – Swizerland
- $4,162 – Luxembourg
- $3,696 – Canada
The current per capita rate for the US is $7290.
US healthcare costs per capita increased between 2000 and 2006 is at a normative rate of about 32% which serves as the median increase. Canada's rate is about the same. The Slovak Republic increased health spending about 54% which is the highest.
Infant mortality – deaths per 1,000 live births (2006). These are the bottom five nations:
- 22.3 – Turkey
- 16.2 – Mexico
- 6.7 – United States
- 6.6 – Slovak Republic
- 6.0 – Poland
Life expectancy – bottom seven (2006):
- 78.1 – USA
- 76.7 – Czech Republic
- 75.3 – Poland
- 74.8 – Mexico
- 74.3 – Slovak Republic
- 73.2 – Hungary
- 71.6 – Turkey
The top here is Japan at 82.4 followed by the next 10 nations in the 80's including Canada.
Comment
While these are not the only indicators, they are quite standard to get a snapshot of a nation's health outcomes. hard to argue that mortality and life expectancy are not sufficient enough measures for this purpose.
So with all these people yelling at town halls I ask them, If not HR 3200 (the current bill), how can you stomach the misleading line that the US system is "the best in the world" and keep it? You are protesting the wrong thing. Protest that we are being ripped off by big insurance and and pharmaceutical corporations that have systematically bought our government from us.
We should all be protesting that we are getting ripped off and with no viable competition to take out these corporations, we are stuck until something big enough can compete. Can we please stop saying that we can't trust government who we supposedly put into office by majority votes and then say we don't trust them? That's insanity. What's more insane is that we say we don't trust them, but we then turn around and by non-action, have put our faith in big corporations under the myth that this is private competition regulating itself. Baloney.
Government is a corporation and the town hall criers, mobsters, tea partiers, etc. have been hoodwinked by corporate government liaisons and the corporations that hired them to do their bidding. This very stout group in the Legislative Branch don't want reform, they want to get paid with corporate dollars and in return have the best medical care money can buy – both taxpayer, and privately funded.
Town hall mobsters… do something different, protest something else, focus on the real problem that no reform at all will only exacerbate. I want my country back too. But the source of the problem is not government. The government is only a symptom of something far more elusive. It is the corporations that own government and to whom we have donated our lives for research and development.
Related posts:
Essentially these same stats were put forth by one questioner at Specter's town hall today, but I don't think anyone walked away remembering it. Rampant misinformation rules the day. Color me discouraged.
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Awesome! Thank you
come on, drew. i agree with most of your comments, but that's really only half the story. where do the corporations start and the gummint end, and vice-versa? the corporations you rightly bemoan could not possibly have gotten into the positions they are in without gummint collusion. so now you ask for the complicit gummint to fix the system it created?
scorched earth, brother; scorched earth. overturn the 16th amendment and free up employers to pay more without income tax penalties, then remove the gummint mandates that put big pharma and big insurance in the driver's seat. abolish comprehensive coverage except for them that wants it, so that the third-party-pay system is gone and removes the ability of the insurance companies to dictate the exorbitant amounts drs, hospitals, etc, have to charge those without coverage.
prior to the freakishly high marginal income tax rates that forced employers to offer full coverage as a dodge to taxes, virtually nobody had more than catastrophic coverage, and everyone could afford care.
more gummint is everywhere and always the absolute worst solution to virtually any given problem. less is always better.
"[Government] is a gang of theives writ large" — Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty
As I said:
"It is the corporations that own government"
So you do the math bro.
my position is that after reading HR3000 (in a fit of sheer masochism) it sounds like something that might offer a way out, especially for entrepreneurs and the self employed who are paying up to 25K for a PPO plan and people who are working for others simply to get affordable health insurance. to be honest i can't see how insurance would be happy with it and that's good. like i said i am cautiously optimistic about it.
and yes i do favor going back to a pre-1913 (that year made a mess for us today didn't it?) flat tax making sure to cut all of the loopholes. but i am willing to gamble on hr3000 in the short term while still looking for someone (like paul and a few others) who have the big picture in mind.
yes, to intentionally misquote, 'damn to the depths the man what ever thought of "IRS"!'
but, hmmm… flat tax…. i dunno. given that basic economic theory shows that growth in an economy comes from capital investment, not consumption (are you listening, mr president?), part of any legitimate (for the sake of argument) role the state had to promote 'the general welfare' would be to encourage savings instead of spending. so a flat or consumption tax would seem to be indicated; perhaps from a social justice standpoint this should be means-tested in some way, since all taxes are regressive (that would have the further benefit of not penalizing entrepreneurship).
however, absent the direct taxation provision of the 16th, i'd maintain that no direct taxationby the federal gummint is constitutional. if states wanted to directly tax citizens in order to meet their apportionment, that's a totally different critter (tho i must admit, i'd oppose that here in texas, too–they should take a chainsaw to the state budget first)
besides, the federal gummint gets as much as it needs from import duties, etc–at least, when they're not fighting wars for imperial expansion or bailing out the universe. (did i mention abolishing the fed would end this, too?)
you're right–that is masochistic… is that a side effect of the lyme?
you are much more of an optimist than i. setting aside the possibly out-of-context quotes from obama about ultimately getting rid of private insurance (and realizing that it's much more likely that private insurance companies would be contracted–read 'subsidised'–to service the 'public' claims), there are many entrenched congresscritters who share that ultimate goal. not to mention, it is the nature of government to metastasize and take over whatever host it has infected. that's the real camel's nose: finding yourself having the state dictate to you that you must take this or that medicine, you must eat meals containing these foods in these proportions, you must pursue this or that line of care for your medical condition; needs, wants, or beliefs be damned, these are the politically profitable regimens! schnell! schnell! SCHNELL!
btw, i cant help but wonder how unnecessary this conversation would be if every american took the following three simple steps:
<ul>
wash hands every time they ate or used the bathroom
walk thirty mintues a day
cut consumption of processed foods in half
</ul>
i mean, would there even be anything left to discuss? and so that's the big pill that i have trouble swallowing in all this: personal responsibility. so good health is not a right, it's a choice. i balk at having to have anyone else pay for my poor lifestyle choices, just i'd balk at having to pay for someone else's.
sorry.. i'm spitballin' here. maybe i should carry all this over to my blog, instead of taking up your bandwidth.
it's all good! the current system has no incentive for healthy lifestyle. they kinda need us to be sick to patent more drugs we don't need. hell have a glass of wine a day with an aspirin, cut back on red meat, eat cold water fish, and don't smoke and bam! if you are a man your cholesterol and chances of heart attack go down dramatically. but we have to have a reason for lipitor…
if you stop and think too long it's daunting stuff. of course "they" don't want us to think too much do they?
of course "they" don't want us to think too much do they?
thus the governmnet schools… but that's an entirely different discussion
also, that doesnt explain why more employers dont incentivise prevention, as this would lower their costs
true. i have heard a few cases where some small businesses were able to lower their premiums with "biggest loser" programs, walk-a-thons, reducing smoking, etc. and offer bonuses as prize winnings. the beauty of behaviorism…
but these are by far the exceptions.
btw, I recently read somewhere that those WHO data are generally ignored by doctor types. i cant substantiate that, or even remember where I saw it. just sayin'
btw, I recently read somewhere that those WHO data are generally ignored by doctor types. i cant substantiate that, or even remember where I saw it. just sayin'