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.
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