Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

I'm saying the US should adopt a more efficient system to reduce costs and probably improve outcomes at the same time.

Me too. However, I've never seen an efficient government system. On the projects I've done for them, cost is almost never a top consideration. Mostly they desire more rigor to prevent any negative political backlash.

The graph, however, shows that the rule of thumb holds, contrary to your (strange) assertions otherwise: countries that spend more on health care are generally ones with better life expectancy. Culture plays a role, but it's abundantly clear that the big difference between (for instance) Egypt and Ireland is expenditures.

On the graph, yes. But I don't know what they mean by cost either. I think you are beginning to understand what I'm pointing at. How many hours of health care do the citizens get for their expense? If the US person gets 400 hours for $4000, while the Egypt person get 4 hours for $400, who got the better deal? An assumption is that everyone is getting the same amount and quality of care. How are costs of living adjusted between the nations (or even within the various US States -- NYC is not like New Hope, AL )?

(Why is "life expectancy" in scare quotes?)

I think it is a bogus measure without any controls. There are many things beyond health care that will affect that outcome.

But their costs are a fraction of the US' (as are everyone's.)

That's hard to confirm without an understanding of what is measured in costs.

This is a rather naive statement. Where is the control group in any country-level data? Societies determine their policy on the basis of the costs and benefits for their people. They aren't laboratories. They don't separate their populations into groups and conduct controlled experiments on them. (Well, maybe in North Korea.)

Right, naive. But, you are more than willing to point at a picture without any regard to the meaning of the data or source. A control in this case would refer to any population where the desired experiment would not be applied. So, for example, if you wanted to study if increasing time in front of a doctor improved life expectancy, you would arrange for a population of people to see a doctor regularly and compare it to the control group. Voila! A measurable outcome.

Sure. You can see where culture comes into the graph. (Genetic factors less so, I suspect that Asians and Africans who live like Americans are every bit as unhealthy.) The countries that are above the curve are those with generally healthier lifestyles (Japan, Singapore) and those below the curve are those with unhealthy ones, or where other factors like war are lowering lifespans. (USA, Iraq). But there is no country that spends gadrillions on its health care with a life expectancy of 50. The dollars are going somewhere and generally doing something.

Where can I see evidence of this? I believe it is much like our education spending, where we keep tossing more money into the toilet hoping it will improve the outcome rather than identify what is limiting the outcome in the first place.

Cuba is not a model that can be emulated.

Ok. I agree that it is a model that I don't want to emulate, but (in my mind) it does share some of the characteristics of the other socialist plans. :)