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The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Whatever criticisms one migh

The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Whatever criticisms one might make of the US healthcare system not enough money is far down the list.

PaulAJ 7y ago
The US also spends more as a proportion of GDP than anywhere else, by a considerable margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Of course its not clear how much of this expenditure goes to various middlemen and how much actually gets spent on the patients. Even phrasing the question in a meaningful way is non-trivial, never mind getting a clear answer.
- andrepd 7y ago
  34% of all healthcare expenditure in the US is "administrative costs".
skissane 7y ago
> The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Brunei, Norway, UAE, Kuwait and Switzerland all have more GDP per capita (PPP) than the US yet spend less per capita on healthcare (PPP). So, the US coming first in health expenditure per capita is not simply due to coming first in wealth. (The US does come first in nominal GDP, but it doesn't make much sense to compare an overall figure like that with a per capita one.)
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Brunei, Norway, UAE, Kuwait and Switzerland all have more GDP per capita (PPP) than the US yet spend less per capita on healthcare (PPP). GDP per capita understates how rich the US is. A better measure is average individual consumption. Unfortunately I can’t find great figures on that but the only country/region with higher household consumption than the US is Hong Kong, with far smaller households[1]. Qatar, Brunei, Kuwait and Norway are petrostates. Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland and Switzerland all have oversized financial sectors and as such Gross National Product gives a more realistic measure of how rich they really are. Singapore and Switzerland it doesn’t change much but Ireland’s GNP is ~80% of GDP. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
eeZah7Ux 7y ago
> The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country ... ...because it's very inefficient
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  You have the causality reversed. The US spends money on marginal improvements in healthcare that other countries judge not worthwhile. The US is so rich that they focus on quality and convenience when other countries are trying to cut costs. The US system really is very inefficient. All that excess capacity makes it relatively robust to surges in demand, like for ICU beds now due to COVID. IIRC the US has 70% average occupancy compared to the UK NHS’s 85%. Waiting times to see a doctor are also much shorter in the US than in Canada. The US is richer so it can afford to value other things over efficiency.
  - andrepd 7y ago
    Well that's complete bullshit, I'm sorry to say. The health care system in the US is by nearly any conceivable metric worse than most developed countries, some of them with a fraction of its healthcare spending. Such indicators include life expectancy, infant mortality, cost for the same procedures, number of bankruptcies due to medical costs per year, number of uninsured people, availability of expensive/experimental treatment... Healthcare in the US is expensive because of reasons such as: identical medicine/equipment/procedures costing many times more in the US than to e.g. the NHS, because administrative costs made up 34% of total healthcare (pause a minute to consider how ludicrous this situation is), absolutely not because it is higher quality. The idea that "the US is so rich that they focus on quality and convenience when other countries are trying to cut costs" is so ludicrous that to believe so requires a real detachment from the daily issues people face. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, tens of millions more are one broken leg away from having their savings wiped. How can anybody then say "they are so good they can afford to splurge"?
andrepd 7y ago
I was talking about countries with a national public health system, in fact I specifically had my own country (and other European countries with similar models) in mind.
jlokier 7y ago
The per capita amount isn't really interesting if (a) most people people aren't getting that, because the average is mainly due to a small minority getting most of the spending; (b) it's wasted spending (admin, fake money/prices circulating around, bullshit jobs taking the money); (c) it's not a measure of the doctor time available to patients. With regard to (c) in particular, it's possible, probable even, to be spending more money than anywhere else while also having insufficient doctor time resource, and therefore having a system stretched to over capacity.

PaulAJ 7y ago

The US also spends more as a proportion of GDP than anywhere else, by a considerable margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Of course its not clear how much of this expenditure goes to various middlemen and how much actually gets spent on the patients. Even phrasing the question in a meaningful way is non-trivial, never mind getting a clear answer.

andrepd 7y ago
34% of all healthcare expenditure in the US is "administrative costs".

skissane 7y ago

> The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Brunei, Norway, UAE, Kuwait and Switzerland all have more GDP per capita (PPP) than the US yet spend less per capita on healthcare (PPP). So, the US coming first in health expenditure per capita is not simply due to coming first in wealth. (The US does come first in nominal GDP, but it doesn't make much sense to compare an overall figure like that with a per capita one.)

barry-cotter 7y ago
> Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Brunei, Norway, UAE, Kuwait and Switzerland all have more GDP per capita (PPP) than the US yet spend less per capita on healthcare (PPP). GDP per capita understates how rich the US is. A better measure is average individual consumption. Unfortunately I can’t find great figures on that but the only country/region with higher household consumption than the US is Hong Kong, with far smaller households[1]. Qatar, Brunei, Kuwait and Norway are petrostates. Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland and Switzerland all have oversized financial sectors and as such Gross National Product gives a more realistic measure of how rich they really are. Singapore and Switzerland it doesn’t change much but Ireland’s GNP is ~80% of GDP. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household_final_consumption_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...

eeZah7Ux 7y ago

> The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country ... ...because it's very inefficient

barry-cotter 7y ago
You have the causality reversed. The US spends money on marginal improvements in healthcare that other countries judge not worthwhile. The US is so rich that they focus on quality and convenience when other countries are trying to cut costs. The US system really is very inefficient. All that excess capacity makes it relatively robust to surges in demand, like for ICU beds now due to COVID. IIRC the US has 70% average occupancy compared to the UK NHS’s 85%. Waiting times to see a doctor are also much shorter in the US than in Canada. The US is richer so it can afford to value other things over efficiency.
- andrepd 7y ago
  Well that's complete bullshit, I'm sorry to say. The health care system in the US is by nearly any conceivable metric worse than most developed countries, some of them with a fraction of its healthcare spending. Such indicators include life expectancy, infant mortality, cost for the same procedures, number of bankruptcies due to medical costs per year, number of uninsured people, availability of expensive/experimental treatment... Healthcare in the US is expensive because of reasons such as: identical medicine/equipment/procedures costing many times more in the US than to e.g. the NHS, because administrative costs made up 34% of total healthcare (pause a minute to consider how ludicrous this situation is), absolutely not because it is higher quality. The idea that "the US is so rich that they focus on quality and convenience when other countries are trying to cut costs" is so ludicrous that to believe so requires a real detachment from the daily issues people face. Tens of millions of people are uninsured, tens of millions more are one broken leg away from having their savings wiped. How can anybody then say "they are so good they can afford to splurge"?

andrepd 7y ago

I was talking about countries with a national public health system, in fact I specifically had my own country (and other European countries with similar models) in mind.

jlokier 7y ago

The per capita amount isn't really interesting if (a) most people people aren't getting that, because the average is mainly due to a small minority getting most of the spending; (b) it's wasted spending (admin, fake money/prices circulating around, bullshit jobs taking the money); (c) it's not a measure of the doctor time available to patients. With regard to (c) in particular, it's possible, probable even, to be spending more money than anywhere else while also having insufficient doctor time resource, and therefore having a system stretched to over capacity.