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You need to look at PPP-adjusted per-capita stats, and also accept that there are limitations in a simple measure of "health outcomes" (e.g. average life expect

You need to look at PPP-adjusted per-capita stats, and also accept that there are limitations in a simple measure of "health outcomes" (e.g. average life expectancy) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health... What you can see though, is a cluster that vaguely fits "spend more, better life expectancy", with two outliers: 1. The USA, massively outspending every other country, but having same life expectancy as China spending a tenth of what it does 2. South Africa, spending roughly as much as Mexico or Columbia, but 10 years less life expectancy. I suspect it needs more targeted spending with its HIV crisis, rather than measuring average spend vs average life expectancy

randerson 2y ago
South Africa's poor life expectancy is more a function of poverty, violence, and HIV, than anything to do with their healthcare system.
myrmidon 2y ago
Another thing to consider about South Africa is that wealth inequality is insanely high; it seems very plausible to me that most money is spent on like the rich 30% of population, and the majority of the country is basically on Namibian levels of care. Public healthcare expenditure is also likely to be wasteful; governmental corruption and languishing infrastructure is a comparatively big problem there (compare power infrastructure, rail network, postal service), so the pure dollar value spent on healthcare is systematically off. Thanks for the link btw-- I would not have expected such a clear trend in this, especially given how noisy metrics like life expectancy are; very interesting.
eru 2y ago
Interestingly, if you plot disposable income against healthcare spending, the US falls squarely on the trend line. See https://www.econlib.org/is-the-us-an-outlier-on-health-care-spending/ https://www.econlib.org/is-the-us-an-outlier-on-health-care-... for a discussion.

randerson 2y ago

South Africa's poor life expectancy is more a function of poverty, violence, and HIV, than anything to do with their healthcare system.

myrmidon 2y ago

Another thing to consider about South Africa is that wealth inequality is insanely high; it seems very plausible to me that most money is spent on like the rich 30% of population, and the majority of the country is basically on Namibian levels of care. Public healthcare expenditure is also likely to be wasteful; governmental corruption and languishing infrastructure is a comparatively big problem there (compare power infrastructure, rail network, postal service), so the pure dollar value spent on healthcare is systematically off. Thanks for the link btw-- I would not have expected such a clear trend in this, especially given how noisy metrics like life expectancy are; very interesting.

eru 2y ago

Interestingly, if you plot disposable income against healthcare spending, the US falls squarely on the trend line. See https://www.econlib.org/is-the-us-an-outlier-on-health-care-spending/ https://www.econlib.org/is-the-us-an-outlier-on-health-care-... for a discussion.