
Cost of Health Care By Country, as Compared to Life Expectancy - alexandros
http://www.good.is/post/cost-of-health-care-by-country-as-compared-to-life-expectancy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+good%2Flbvp+%28GOOD+Main+RSS+Feed%29&utm_content=FaceBook
======
cwan
A response to the graphic suggests that while "this was evidence of an insane
and inefficient healthcare system", "if [they] really wanted a chart that
captures what’s wrong with America’s healthcare system, [they] should have
gone to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ national health
expenditures data website and downloaded the figures showing how rampant
third-party payment has resulted in consumers directly paying for less than 12
percent of healthcare costs. And when people are purchasing something with
(what is perceived to be) other people’s money, it’s understandable that they
don’t pay much attention to cost." ([http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/29/the-
real-healthcare-char...](http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/29/the-real-
healthcare-chart-of-the-day/))

I'm sympathetic to this argument given that the American healthcare system is
considerably different than many healthcare systems globally in that private
insurers acting on behalf of employers (not the users of healthcare) pick up a
significant portion of the pie (even if, on a per capita basis, Medicare
spending is more than most countries like Canada - though this fact alone begs
the question of why the US government wouldn't first seek to fix Medicare).

As a Canadian, the one thing I don't quite understand is how many of my
countrymen are so quick to condemn the American system despite all the obvious
signs that the Canadian system is unsustainable and failing
([http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive...](http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/08/18/national-
post-editorial-board-canadian-healthcare-is-no-model.aspx)). Further, you read
about Animal farm like anecdotes (to be fair, I've seen first hand some of
this in Canada as well), and you wonder whether or not healthcare systems
abroad can really be distinctly categorized between those that are "universal"
and "non-universal" given how radically different implementation is - an
example from Japan here:
[http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2010/01/my_family_the_v....](http://biglizards.net/blog/archives/2010/01/my_family_the_v.html)

There are at least 2 other big problems with this graph if presumably it's
being used to argue for changes in policy:

(1) The measurement of life expectancy "at birth". The US spends a
considerable amount of money aggressively attempting to treat what would
otherwise be considered stillborns. (2) The lifestyles of Americans that may
have nothing at all to do with healthcare implementation
([http://www.usnews.com/health/family-
health/articles/2008/04/...](http://www.usnews.com/health/family-
health/articles/2008/04/22/obesitys-link-to-life-expectancy.html)) - ie this
could very well mean that if the US miraculously grew an entirely public and
universal healthcare system as modeled against XYZ country, US life expectancy
might not necessarily get any cheaper or better - it is entirely possible that
it would become more expensive and worse.

~~~
chrischen
Also after a visit to a psychiatrist I found out they charge your insurance
more, if you have it, than they would if you didn't. I'm not exactly sure what
that was about, but if it was for sympathy, then it just shows that having a
bureaucratic insurance company, private or government owned, would still have
this problem of distancing the money from the patient.

However I'm still a large proponent of not only life as a right, but
healthcare too.

~~~
gabrielroth
It's nothing to do with sympathy. Many businesses try to charge different
prices to different consumers based on ability to pay. If you charge a single
fixed price, you'll miss out on some sales (to people who'd buy your product
at a lower price) and on some profits (from people who'd pay more than you're
charging). It's the same phenomenon behind coupons, sales, 'premium' and
'budget' versions, etc. etc. From a provider's point of view, the fact that
someone does or doesn't have insurance is an important signal about what
s/he'll pay for medical services, and they're rational to take advantage of
it.

~~~
chrischen
Well in any case, it my point still stands. They overcharge for insurance. In
the end someone still has to pay that extra amount.

------
nostrademons
I wonder if this controls for various other lifestyle choices.

I find it ironic that the government spends so much money subsidizing high
fructose corn syrup, and then spends even more treating the health problems
that result from it. If we didn't have an agricultural system that makes
unhealthy food cheap and healthy food expensive, perhaps we wouldn't have
quite so many obesity-related illnesses.

Same thing with parking lots and interstates being subsidized while dense
urban development (walkable/bikeable neighborhoods) is not. Cars kill a lot of
people outright through accidents, and then indirectly through people becoming
couch potatoes.

Usually by the time people come under care of the health care, the battle's
already been lost. Acute, lifesaving interventions on otherwise healthy people
aren't all that expensive. Chronic conditions caused by 40 years of neglect
are. I'm curious if we'd get both the cheaper health care _and_ the longer
life expectancy of European countries if our cities were laid out like theirs
and our agricultural system didn't dump massive amounts of subsidies on the
corn industry.

~~~
terrellm
Good point...poor lifestyle drives healthcare costs up. It would be
interesting to see fast food spending or avg calories/day on top of this
chart.

~~~
pxlpshr
Couldn't agree more and it's a point a lot of people are hush-huse about
because it's easier to point the finger at the system than poor personal
habits.

just a small sample... <http://grab.by/1v6n>

~~~
potatolicious
Here's the thing, I'm a Canadian who's living in the USA. Canada has much
lower health care costs - but our dietary patterns are much the same. In fact,
I really have not changed my feeding habits _at all_ since coming to the USA.

Yes, unhealthy dietary choices weighs the system down - but it weighs _all_
systems down, and to say it accounts for the majority of the discrepancy is
IMHO missing the gorilla in the room, which is that the US health care system
is unbelievably broken.

Addendum: There is _one_ thing where the US is very different from Canada. You
guys eat the same stuff we do... but you eat _much more_ of it. I'm pretty
convinced that the average American can eat _half_ , if not _one quarter_ what
they currently do and be just fine. Serving sizes in the US are so big that
nowadays I often pack up lunch leftovers and have more than enough for dinner.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Canadian diet patterns are significantly different from those in the US. As of
2004, Canada had an obesity rate of 23.1%. The corresponding rate in the US
(circa 2005) was 34%.

The big difference here is probably racial. Table 3 of my first link suggests
white Canadians are only a little thinner than white Americans. But blacks,
particularly black women, are considerably fatter than average. They make up
about 12% of the US and 2% of Canada.

[http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-620-m/2005001/article/adults...](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-620-m/2005001/article/adults-
adultes/8060-eng.htm)

[http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-620-m/2005001/article/adults...](http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-620-m/2005001/article/adults-
adultes/8060-eng.htm)

~~~
nostrademons
That wouldn't account for it. Even if every single black person was obese and
every single white person was not, a 2%->12% discrepancy in black population
could only account for a 10% swing in obesity rates. The rates you cite differ
by more than that.

I think that potatolicious's addendum hit the nail on the head though:
Americans _eat too much food_. When I cook for myself or eat at Google, my
portion size is about 2/3 the typical restaurant portion. Doggy-bags have
always been normal when my family ate out - it's not unusual for a restaurant
meal to generate at least another couple lunches and sometimes another dinner.
We're not fat. I suspect that a lot of Americans don't realize that restaurant
portions are sized to accommodate the biggest conceivable person eating there
(serving too little food is far worse than serving too much), and that the
typical person shouldn't be eating anywhere near that much.

~~~
yummyfajitas
True, blacks alone would not account for the disparity. As I mentioned, white
Canadians are less obese as well.

But the disparity is much larger for blacks. I mentioned blacks mainly because
I could quickly find statistics for them.

------
scott_s
This is a terrible graph. It took me five minutes to figure out how everything
is related. Data such as this is much more naturally plotted as an x-y
scatter-plot. Thickness of the datapoints could indicate number of doctor
visits. Instead, the graph eliminates the x-axis, but retains the space. Very
strange choice.

~~~
bengebre
Agreed. Here's the same data in a scatter plot (second chart down). Far, far
easier to grasp.

[http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/12/healthcare_spen.html)

~~~
scott_s
Thank you. As I suspected, I can immediately read the scatter plot. And the
correlation that I wondered about is indeed there.

~~~
jstevens85
The problem with the scatter plot is that you lose the average cost/average
life expectancy info. On the original plot, the UK corresponds roughly to
average health care costs and average LE. The slope shows if the country is
getting value for money. The upward slope of New Zealand shows that they are
spending less money per person than the average yet getting better than
average results. The downward slope of Denmark shows that they spend more than
the average for inferior results. That information is lost in the scatter
plot.

~~~
scott_s
But it could easily be added in by having horizontal and vertical lines added
that read "average healthcare cost" and "average life expectancy."

------
coffeemug
I'd imagine that computing the cost of health care is an incredibly complex
undertaking. Without being able to review the methodology used, this graph is
next to useless. For example, here are just a few questions that come to mind
(and I'm sure more would arise if the methodology was properly peer reviewed):

1\. Are there no data points between the United States and Switzerland? Are
there no data points above the United States and below Mexico? If there are,
that would make the graph misleading and they have to specify this limitation
if they're intellectually honest. If there aren't, they have to demonstrate
that they've gone through the exhaustive list of countries and there are no
other "interesting" data points.

2\. Is the cost adjusted for cost of living at a given country? If not, that
would make the graph extremely misleading. If yes, what adjustment strategy
was used? Can we see the ratio between cost of health care and median yearly
salary, for example?

3\. What does "average life expectancy at birth mean"? Does it account for
countries that have a significantly lower birth rate than the United States? I
would guess not, which could significantly affect the perception of the
numbers. How does one normalize for something like that?

4\. How was the currency conversion rate computed? Currency prices fluctuate
throughout the year, did they account for that? How much does that affect the
numbers? Could be a lot, could be a little, but I need to know whether this
was taken into account.

5\. What does "universal health coverage" mean? Soviet Union had universal
health coverage and no medication, surgery performed by under-qualified
residents, and no post-surgery care, unless you know someone or bribe the
doctor, of course.

6\. Surely there are countries without universal health care other than the
U.S. and Mexico - how do they stack up?

7\. I'm willing to bet a country like Poland has _a lot_ more homeless people
that don't factor into the life expectancy numbers than the U.S. That begs a
more general question of whether the same methodology was used for computing
the cost or life expectancy for each country. If they simply took official
numbers from each country, it's almost certain that they were computed
differently. Was this accounted for? If not, I need to know. If yes, how were
the numbers normalized?

One could probably come up with dozens of questions like these. Of course any
analysis of a problem that complex can be called into question, that doesn't
mean every analysis is useless. But before we can seriously discuss this
graph, or base any policy decisions on it, they at least have to provide the
methodology. It doesn't look like this graph is intellectually honest to me,
and the burden of proof is on the author.

------
chasingsparks
Graphs are abused.

Graphs are meant to present data clearly and concisely. The most clear and
concise presentation method should be used. If it is not, there are reasons to
be skeptical.

This graph is not the best presentation imaginable; it's not even mediocre. It
is meant to appeal visually to those who already have reached the conclusions
it is meant to illicit; it is graph porn.

Health care spending and quality is _very_ complex. What about adjusting for
relative wealth (not merely the health care spending share of GDP),
lifestyles, racial composition (if I am correct, there are biological
differences in addition to the obvious socio-economic ones), preferences (how
much would you spend for an extra month), etc. Asking questions like why other
countries spend less on drugs (does the U.S. subsidize medical research by
spending more or is it merely the one that allows rent seeking or both?)

After doing so, I believe you will still find evidence suggesting that the
U.S. system spends more than it should and there can be clearly identified
inefficiencies. That is the distilled information that is interesting -- not
the merely manipulative.

~~~
ams6110
The research question is one that occurred to me. Do these cost data include
spending on medical and pharmaceutical research? I would imagine that the bulk
of that spending occurs in those same countries that are "above" the average
line in this graph, and could contribute to that skewing.

~~~
chasingsparks
U.S. patients certainly subsidize drug research. There are frequent calls for
re-importation of drugs from other countries because, often, they are
identical to the U.S. drugs, but have been bought by foreign governments
exercising monopoly purchasing power. It makes sense for the drug company to
sell at the discount because the manufacturing cost is so low that it is still
profitable. Consequently, U.S. patients, who do not get the monopoly proxy,
pay the higher cost.

This often leads to accusations of price gouging. However, looking at the
returns on investment from publicly listed companies suggests that they are
not charging extortionary fees. There financial figures are in line with that
of the tech industry.

Granted, drug costs only one element among many in the debate, but I am pretty
confident in saying that if drug costs were uniform, other countries would be
paying more and the U.S. would be paying less (relative to current spending.)

------
antirez
Data for missing countries (from a comment written by the author of the
original graph):

    
    
        HEALTH CARE SPENDING (per person in U.S. dollars)
        Norway: $4,763
        Netherlands: 3,837
        Belgium: 3,595
        Germany: 3,588
        Ireland: 3,424
        Iceland: 3,319
        -------------(OECD average: $2,986)
        Greece: 2,727
        Italy: 2,686
        Turkey: 618
    
        LIFE EXPECTANCY
        Italy: 81.2
        Iceland: 81.2
        Norway: 80.6
        Netherlands: 80.2
        Germany: 79.8
        Ireland: 79.7
        Belgium: 79.5
        Greece: 79.5
        -------------(OECD average: 79.2)
        Turkey: 72.1
    
        DOCTOR VISITS A YEAR
        Belgium: 7.6
        Germany: 7.5
        Iceland: 6.5
        Netherlands: 5.7
        Turkey: 5.6
        Italy: no data
        Norway: no data
        Ireland: no data
        Greece: no data
    

It's a shame the graph misses data form countries like Italy or German, both
countries provides free universal health care.

------
hs
of the three countries that have highest (and surprisingly parallel) slope:
japan, south kore, mexico ... it suggests that #visit correlates with LE ...
and health coverage is unimportant

but there are countries that have less #visit but more expensive (it suggests
patients go to doctor not only for consultation) ... so #visit is an
unreliable predictor so is cost

to me it seems the most predictive is location (yes, the country names are
data points too) ... if i want to live long, i'll settle in japan and do what
the average japanese for their healthy lifestyle

~~~
scott_s
The slope of the line is an artifact of the visualization choice.

~~~
DrJokepu
I think the slope is the whole point of the graph and it is supposed represent
efficiency although in a very unfortunate way. The angle of the slope is
defined by arcsin((life_expectancy - healthcare_costs) / constant). It's a bit
like subtracting apples from oranges.

If there's one thing I've learned at engineering school it's that mixing up
units of measurement is not a good idea. If you subtract years from dollars
the value you get will carry no meaning. And that's why this visualisation is
completely meaningless. They should come up with a more clearly defined and
sane approach.

------
codexon
Why is hacker news linking to blogspam instead of the original National
Geographic website?

The blog is copying Clusterflock which copied kottke which credited biancolo
who presumably saw it directly from National Geographic.

[http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-
care.h...](http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-care.html)

------
lionhearted
Some reasons American medicine is very expensive:

1\. Health insurance, but not treatment, is fully tax deductible. So if you
buy your own penicillin, it's with after tax money, but if your insurance
company buys it, it's pre-tax money. That's one of the reasons that health
insurance is so widespred in America even for routine medicine like
antibiotics and checkups. That's a major contributing factor in why the
administrative costs are so high.

2\. There's a shortage of doctors in America, and qualified doctors from other
countries are not allowed to practice medicine in the United States. So
there's good doctors from Canada, England, Japan, wherever that'd love to
practice in the USA, but can't. This artificially inflates doctor's wages by
restricting supply.

3\. American doctors are typically required to get an undergraduate degree,
medical degree, and do a below market, crazy hours residency in order to be
able to practice medicine. That's 8-10 years of study and below market working
to practice medicine. Now, medicine is very important and needs to be done
right, but I don't believe for a second that a focused apprenceship couldn't
teach a very specific kind of medicine - say arithscopic surgery - in just 2-4
years under a highly trained doctor, but this isn't an option.

4\. The Food and Drug Administration requires new drugs to be proven not only
for safety, but also efficacy. That's an incredibly high and expensive burden
to meet - that means that drugs need to be proven to work to a certain
standard, instead of just not harm. This adds years of development time and
millions of dollars in cost to the new drug development cycle.

Those are all legislated reasons that increase the cost of medical insurance,
doctors, and drugs. They'd be fairly easy to remove -

1\. All medical and health expenses can be written off taxes regardless of
insurance. Employees can choose to convert som of their wages to a medical or
health plan tax free to both the employer and employee. (Currently, under most
circumstances, only employer-provided health insurance can is tax free)

2\. Allow any doctor in a country with reasonably competent medical standards
to practice in the United States.

3\. Require that doctors be able to demonstrate that they can practice their
area of medicine capably. Be flexible in how they demonstrate that. Note: This
will incur high opposition from medical schools and current doctors who are
currently enjoying the wage premium and had to go through the very long,
difficult, and expensive system.

4\. Change the drug standard from "safety and efficacy" to only safety. Drugs
will come to market much faster and cheaper. There's plenty of people and
organizations that will test proven safe drugs for efficacy for free or
nominal cost once drugs hit market, and efficacy will get understood with
time. Put this way - a proven safe but questionably effective treatment
against heart disease being held off the market for five years and costing
much more to get to market is not a good thing. If it's certainly safe, then
let people make the decisions with their physicians, instead of having the FDA
take such a strong gatekeeping stance.

Technology has progressed such that we don't need government protection from
ourselves as much any more. The current set of legislation has greatly
increased the costs of doctors and medicine. Regardless of political position,
and regardless of stance on other health issues, addressing these four points
will make the medical system fairer, more effective, and and less expensive
with relative ease.

Admittedly, there's some powerful entrenched interests that are winning in the
current arrangement, and will oppose these simple improvements.

~~~
gabrielroth
I agree with your overall point that the U.S. medical system suffers from
overregulation. We could (and should) allow more primary care to be performed
by, for instance, qualified nurses, RNs, and nurse-practitioners. As you point
out, the existing guilds hate this idea.

But your first point needs some correction. Health insurance is only tax-
deductible when it's paid for by your employer. [EDIT: Just noticed you
mention this lower down, but your first paragraph gives a misleading
impression.]

This is perverse in multiple ways. There's the way you mention: that it
subsidizes health care over other forms of compensation, so we wind up
spending more on health care than we would otherwise.

But also, with particular relevance to HN, it subsidizes employment over other
kinds of work. If you leave your job to start a startup, you lose a
substantial tax advantage.

~~~
ams6110
If you are employed but your employer does not offer insurance, ask if they
would pay for an individual plan out of payroll withholding. I've done this
and it lets you buy insurance pre-tax even if your employer does not have a
plan. This is a significant savings.

------
Alex3917
In addition to health insurance being broken, it seems like most doctors are
really terrible in the U.S. I read the other day that it takes on average
seven years to correctly diagnose a medical condition. Some diseases, like
celiacs, have an average time until diagnosis of 10 years. If you haven't
already read How Doctors Think, it's truly horrifying. Unless you have
something like strept throat, you're generally pretty screwed even if you have
great medical insurance. And I'm speaking from personal experience here; about
three years ago I started having some medical issues, and I went into the
doctor the day the symptoms started happening. A dozen doctors and specialists
later and I still don't have a correct diagnosis. The fact that I'm probably
going to have to wait another 5+ years until I can get the problem even
diagnosed is complete bullshit. Now it could just be that I have something
that is really hard to diagnose, but more likely the reason no one can figure
it out is that medical schools have done their best to select doctors with
zero intellectual curiosity who never voluntarily read anything about medicine
other than pharma pamphlets. Just look at what happened to Shooter because the
'best' doctors couldn't even diagnose something as trivial as lyme disease:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=868325>

edit: Someone really needs to make a crowdsourced website where you can post
all your symptoms and test results, and then offer up a bounty to anyone who
can figure out the correct diagnosis.

~~~
carbocation
Someone with even a remote familiarity with the practice of medicine would not
refer to Lyme disease, one of the great imitators, as 'trivial'. The rest of
your post, though forceful, similarly suffers from having no idea what you are
talking about.

Regarding the length of time from the onset of low-risk chronic diseases
(unpleasant though they may be), you are right that this is a problem but dead
wrong about the cause. The problem is overspecialization and
undercoordination. An inherent idiocy in the practitioners would be an easy
problem to remedy; the truth is much more pernicious.

~~~
Alex3917
"Someone with even a remote familiarity with the practice of medicine would
not refer to Lyme disease, one of the great imitators, as 'trivial'."

The fact that it is an imitator makes it easier to diagnose, because a
competent doctor will test you for it whenever you have unexplained symptoms.
While it's true that the blood tests aren't very accurate, most of the problem
is that doctors just don't get people tested in the first place. And even for
chronic lyme that is undetectable because it supposedly forms cysts within the
cells, there is a new test up to 50x more accurate than the standard test
being developed that you can have access to if you're willing to be part of
the trial group.

~~~
sailormoon
_The fact that it is an imitator makes it easier to diagnose, because a
competent doctor will test you for it whenever you have unexplained symptoms._

That is a very unfair thing to say, IMO. You cannot just do unlimited blood
tests for everyone who might possibly be at risk of $something. Lyme disease
is notoriously hard to diagnose and also very rare. It is unfortunate that the
case you referred to turned out the way it did. Our medical knowledge is far
from perfect, and no doubt it was a learning experience for everyone involved.
But it's going way too far to call the doctors "incompetent". If anything it
is our entire medical system that remains "incompetent" and calling out
individual practitioners is very unfair.

~~~
Alex3917
"Lyme disease is notoriously hard to diagnose and also very rare."

It's probably one of the most common, if not the most common, systemic
diseases. Any time you have multiple symptoms that can't be explained, lyme is
pretty much the first thing a competent doctor would test for. Sorry, but any
doctor who heard the list of shooter's symtoms and doesn't instantly think
lyme is incompetent. And it's really not that rare, even in absolute terms.
Off the top of my head I can think of five friends who have gotten it, and
those are only the ones I know of.

~~~
sailormoon
_I can think of five friends who have gotten it, and those are only the ones I
know of._

According to Wikipedia, "the ratio of Lyme disease infection is 7.9 cases for
every 100,000 persons". So either you have a staggering number of friends,
live in some kind of hot zone ground zero for the disease, or there's some
other factor at work.

 _any doctor who heard the list of shooter's symtoms and doesn't instantly
think lyme is incompetent_

You talk like Lyme is a solved problem. I do not believe this to be the case.
There is a lot of controversy over the condition and it is one of those
diseases that people seize upon to explain symptoms they believe themselves to
suffer, regardless of medical fact.

Have a read of this:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/magazine/17LYMEDISEASE.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/magazine/17LYMEDISEASE.html)

------
shughes
I think we should show a chart of each country's health care costs relative to
how much their lawyers make on health care related malpractice cases. Because
in America, it's out of control, and probably the largest reason health care
costs so much.

Honestly, a good first step in taming the health care and health insurance
costs should be to cap how much lawyers make on malpractice cases.

Why do people rarely talk about tort reform? I apologize if you did, but I
just did a quick browser search for "tort" and "lawyer" and got no results.

~~~
shughes
Really, why was I down voted? I'm not sure what was wrong with the comment. I
think anyone would agree with the idea of tort reform, just like anyone would
agree with the idea of health care reform. But even if you don't, I thought
that with Hacker news, you only down vote people when they aren't insightful
or off-topic. So, a differing opinion also accounts for down voting now? Like
on Digg?

~~~
shughes
Sigh..

------
fauigerzigerk
Apart from the utter brokenness of the US system, which needs no further proof
I guess, this chart says that health care spending isn't very effective at
increasing life expectancy. There are other factors, maybe food, that
influence life expectancy much more than health care.

------
chrischen
Oh I must be stupid. I spent a good three minutes trying to find where the
United States was because I scrolled down.

------
olefoo
That's an awesome and persuasive infographic. In fact, it's main fault is that
it's trying too hard to be persuasive. Putting the US above the legend
detracts from the power of the raw data and strikes me as being unnecessarily
editorial.

~~~
walkon
It's not _that_ awesome when you remember that correlation does not
necessarily equal causation.

~~~
dhume
It's not about showing correlation. It's about showing that we're not getting
what we're paying for.

~~~
walkon
It fails to definitively show that _we're not getting what we're paying for_
because a graph such as this only shows correlation.

~~~
onoj
You are correct. But, If Americans are paying (av. 7k) per year on health and
have a lower life expectancy that other industrialized nations, the data alone
suggest Something is going very wrong. Strange that it has some of the highest
paid doctors and most profitable health care companies also. Surely there must
be an explanation study somewhere?
[http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-
doc...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-
other-countries-make/)
[http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=103622972.h...](http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=103622972.html)

------
elblanco
The way the UK hits just at average (for cost and life expectancy) appears to
almost make that look intentional.

------
scythe
Mexico is in red, which I suppose is "technically" accurate, but the Mexican
Constitution guarantees health care to all citizens:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Mexico#Public_he...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Mexico#Public_health_care_delivery)

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axod
This is just one of many reasons to not startup/move to the US. Don't buy the
hype.

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kadavy
This is a great infographic with a high data-to-ink density.

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revorad
False. The data in this "infographic" is really best represented as a scatter
plot, using much less ink, as shown in [1] and similar other blog posts. The
lines are unnecessary and misleading.

It's good that Tufte has made concepts like data-to-ink density popular. But I
urge you to actually evaluate that value when you look at a graph and refrain
from using it to merely signal your knowledge of the right buzzwords.

[1][http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/12/healthcare_spen.html)

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borism
it's a great graph to illustrate how f-up healthcare in US is.

however, may I point out that life expectancy at birth is pretty poor measure
of healthcare efficiency.

japanese are living very long lives, but it is no secret that depression and
suicide is the major problem there, especially in younger generations.

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whyme
Go Obama Go!

