Go find your own data set if you don't like this one. I have no attachment to it. I'd love to see one that doesn't have the US ahead by a mile. Never have, though.
What's measured in costs? Total spending per capita. Says so right on the graph. What's the issue? Do you need to see it spelled out line by line before you'll accept the general picture? I've never seen a number that doesn't agree with that graph, at least approximately.
How do they account for cost of living? See that bit at the bottom of the "picture" I pointed at, where it says "International dollars"? That's how.
How many "hours" of health care to people get? What's an "hour" of health care? How do you measure it? What does it provide? An hour of brain surgery could change my life, or kill me. An hour's check-up could be of almost no value. You have to measure the quality of health care by outcomes. There is no other realistic way.
Prefer to measure it as a percentage of GDP, maybe? The US is 50% higher than the rest of the developed world, 16% as opposed to the normal 10%.
It kind of seems like you're just fishing for whatever nitpicky reasons you can find to reject the obvious. Do you really think that finding out what's measured by "costs" exactly is going to make two thousand dollars per capita per year of difference? That cost of living is so very different from the USA to Canada to Britain to Australia that it's going to change the rankings (even if it wasn't already in there, which it is)?
Good luck with that whole experiment thing. To measure health outcomes, you need *lifetimes*. You want to get someone to fund your study where you track hundreds of thousands of people across their lives, with one group getting better access to doctors than the other? I think you'll find the obvious: more doctor time = better, with diminishing returns past a certain point. But you'll never, ever get that study done. Too expensive, and by the time the results are in, you'll be dead. Population statistics are the only realistic way to discuss this topic, and if you don't like it, we have no data at all.
-Jester
The original graphs are from here, by the way.
What's measured in costs? Total spending per capita. Says so right on the graph. What's the issue? Do you need to see it spelled out line by line before you'll accept the general picture? I've never seen a number that doesn't agree with that graph, at least approximately.
How do they account for cost of living? See that bit at the bottom of the "picture" I pointed at, where it says "International dollars"? That's how.
How many "hours" of health care to people get? What's an "hour" of health care? How do you measure it? What does it provide? An hour of brain surgery could change my life, or kill me. An hour's check-up could be of almost no value. You have to measure the quality of health care by outcomes. There is no other realistic way.
Prefer to measure it as a percentage of GDP, maybe? The US is 50% higher than the rest of the developed world, 16% as opposed to the normal 10%.
It kind of seems like you're just fishing for whatever nitpicky reasons you can find to reject the obvious. Do you really think that finding out what's measured by "costs" exactly is going to make two thousand dollars per capita per year of difference? That cost of living is so very different from the USA to Canada to Britain to Australia that it's going to change the rankings (even if it wasn't already in there, which it is)?
Good luck with that whole experiment thing. To measure health outcomes, you need *lifetimes*. You want to get someone to fund your study where you track hundreds of thousands of people across their lives, with one group getting better access to doctors than the other? I think you'll find the obvious: more doctor time = better, with diminishing returns past a certain point. But you'll never, ever get that study done. Too expensive, and by the time the results are in, you'll be dead. Population statistics are the only realistic way to discuss this topic, and if you don't like it, we have no data at all.
Quote: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.Yeah. It works, and it doesn't cost 16% of GDP.
-Jester
The original graphs are from here, by the way.