

Health Care in the United States - m0th87
http://whoadata.appspot.com/healthcare/

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tedunangst
A bar graph of numerical ranking is probably the most misleading way to
present data I've ever seen. I'll have to remember that...

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teamonkey
Also "Lower bars are better" is quite ambiguous in this case.

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m0th87
Yes, for both of these reasons I felt somewhat hesitant of including that
chart. There really is no way of quantifying the effectiveness of any health
care system very well, but I feel the need to try to provide some sort of
perspective, so I figured munging some of the most common indicators together
might have some sort of value. Any ideas on another way of doing this?

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teamonkey
"Smaller bars are better" ;)

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m0th87
Sorry, misunderstood what you meant. Fixed :)

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mnemonicsloth
Flagged as political.

The US Senate passed the biggest ever piece of health care legislation
yesterday. The debate has been angry and has been going on for more than six
months.

How is it not obvious that this is flamebait?

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m0th87
I was hoping to garner interest because its my first infographic-ish creation,
and I'd like some criticism before designing another. It clearly has a
political leaning, but it was also designed to avoid the current health care
debate and any discussion on what the optimal solution is. Rather, it's simply
supposed to portray the problems that exist with the current system.

As a side-note, the bill is far from passed; the Senate still has to reconcile
its differences with an angry House before it gets on the President's desk.

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chrisgoodrich
I loved the data visualizations. The only political ideal that this pushes is
the need for reform, but I don't think anybody debates that.

As a side-note to the side-note, the bill has yet to even pass the Senate.
They have merely cleared procedural hurdles to avoid a filibuster. A final
vote is expected late on Christmas eve, however it only needs a simple
majority to pass which it is likely to get without a problem.

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m0th87
They're all (minus the world map) generated by the Google Visualization API
and the Google Chart API. Part of the reason I made this was to learn those
APIs. They're pretty cool, although the chart API has some infuriatingly bad
habits in rendering.

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tlrobinson
Is the expenditures graph adjusted for inflation?

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m0th87
Yes. It's based on National Health Expenditure Data, but it's more or less a
replica of this by the NYT:
[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/02/28/business/0301...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/02/28/business/0301-sbn-
webHEALTH.gif)

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teuobk
Data sources?

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chrisgoodrich
<http://whoadata.appspot.com/healthcare/notes.html>

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jcnnghm
How do patient outcomes compare for those with insurance in the United States
versus other countries? What percentage of global health R&D occurs in the
United States?

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m0th87
I didn't find any solid stats on that sort of information. Patient outcomes
are difficult because there is room for subjectivity. R&D I really wanted
because a common argument is that one of the reasons why costs are so high is
because taxpayers subsidize research.

