Money For Nothing
Kash at Angry Bear posts a chart showing health care costs and some health care outcomes in various countries.
The United States, for instance, spends $5,267 per person on health care and has a life expectancy at birth of 77.1 years and an infant mortality rate of 6.8.
France spends about $2500 per person per year less than we do for health care and the French live two years longer and have a lower infant mortality rate.
Sweden spends less than half the money per capita on health care than the US, and the Swedes live longer and have an infant mortality rate a little over half the US.
The Japanese have longer life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates while spending only spending about 40% of our costs.
Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber posted a chart showing the percentage of health care costs borne by the governments of various countries. Thus, we learn that in the US, the government pays about 40% of total health care costs while the government of France pays 75% of its total health care costs, Japan 80% and Sweden 85%.
Let's combine the information from the two charts. In the United States, the government spends $2106 per person on health care while individual Americans pay $3160, for a total of $5267 per person. In France, the government pays $2052 while the individual Frenchman pays $684 per year. In Sweden, the goverment pays $2139 per person while the individual Swede pays $377.
Thus, our government pays about the same or more for health care than the governments of Sweden or France while buying only about half of the care. It is hard to see what we get for the additional $2500 or so per person per year. That seems to be money spent for nothing.
The choice for a normal American family of four is stark. You could have our current health care system, or your family could have the longer life of the French along with a little under $10,000 per year to spend however you choose.
You could have our health care system in its current form, or you could have the lower infant mortality of the Swedes along with more than $11,000 per year to spend however you wish.
I know that it is hard to have to wait a while to get hip replacement surgery, but at $10,000 per year from now until I need the procedure, I can afford the wait.
Comments
"The Japanese have longer life expectancies and lower infant mortality rates while spending only spending about 40% of our costs."
ADM would have you believe that it's due to soy...
Posted by: Peatey | April 13, 2005 01:47 PM
And rice and fish and exercise and lack of guns and the homogeneity of the population, and many, many other factors, too. We obviously could not duplicate the exact experience of any other nation but I suspect that some sort of "socialized medicine" would not cost the government much more and would provide substantial savings for businesses and individuals.
Posted by: dwight Meredith | April 13, 2005 01:54 PM
Outstanding, as usual.
I took the liberty of stealing your entire post.
Didn't want any readers to skip it because they didn't want to click yet another hyperlink.
Tomorow is April 15.
I'm reminded it is easier to get forgiveness than permission. So if you want to invoke any copyright privileges I will be glad to delete my post.
Hearing no objections, I'll let it stand.
Posted by: John Ballard | April 14, 2005 07:12 AM
Not a problem John. Thanks for reading and linking.
Posted by: dwight Meredith | April 14, 2005 11:55 AM
I wholeheartedly agree that costs here are outlandish and that if you're poor you can just croak for all the system cares, but it's not a strong argument the way you stated it. "The government" is tax money and the French, Swedes, etc pay an arm and a leg in taxes, so they don't have "$11,000 per year to spend however [they] wish." The doctors (at least in France and the UK, where I've seen it) are notoriously underpaid and overworked.
Still, I would love to move to a national healthcare program, but would it be too large to be feasible?
Phyllis
Posted by: Phyllis | April 14, 2005 06:42 PM
Phyllis:
The French and the Swedes may pay an arm and a leg in taxes in a general sense but they pay the same in taxes for their healthcare system as we pay in taxes for ours. We pay an additional $2,500 out of pocket that neither the French nor the Swedes pay. For a family of four, that works out to about $10,000 per year.
Posted by: dwight Meredith | April 14, 2005 08:16 PM