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This is about as meaningful as ranking the US healthcare system in terms of the average height of doctors.
by grandalf 13y ago
This is about as meaningful as ranking the US healthcare system in terms of the average height of doctors.
- grecy 13y agoOne of the major topics that comes up when discussing taxpayer funded universal healthcare is the fear of "Government inefficiency", which (we're lead to believe) will eventually result in increased Health Care costs. These numbers and rankings show the United States spends drastically more than countries with universal healthcare, showing that the profit for the private healthcare industry is larger than any "Government inefficiencies". The rankings show if the United States adopted a taxpayer funded Universal Healthcare model similar to those of Developed countries, the end-of-the-day costs for healthcare would go down, and everyone would actually have more money, not less.
- protomyth 13y agoNo, the rankings really don't show that. What they show is a rating based on "life expectancy (weighted 60%), relative per capita cost of health care (30%); and absolute per capita cost of health care (10%). Countries were scored on each criterion and the scores were weighted and summed to obtain their efficiency scores. Relative cost is health cost per capita as a percentage of GDP per capita. Absolute cost is total health expenditure, which covers preventive and curative health services, family planning, nutrition activities and emergency aid." I should also point out life expectancy is a "crock" because some of these countries do no include live births that are under a certain number of weeks. Look at the comparison of Germany vs. France vs. US.
- rdtsc 13y ago> This is about as meaningful as ranking the US healthcare system in terms of the average height of doctors. Can you share some details why? I don't think it is that obvious what you mean. I see "life expectancy", "health care costs as a % of GDP/capita" and "health-care cost per capita" and some efficiency index that I can't immediately tell how it was computed. It seems "interesting" on the surface though.
- InclinedPlane 13y agoLife expectancy is not solely determined by medical care though, there are many confounding factors which are, if anything, far more important than medical care. Ranging from genetic to cultural to socio-economic. Edit: Also, health related statics can be tricky things to measure correctly, even though it may seem simple. It can depend on how countries define live births, for example, which varies greatly from country to country. Moreover, it's not necessarily a good proxy for "health". If someone breaks their arm, for example, and is unable to get it set by a doctor then they could live the entire rest of their life with a disabling injury, perhaps with a great deal of pain, even though they may end up living just as long as anyone else. Similarly, someone may spend the last decade of their life in a very pitiable state, suffering from dementia or alzheimer's and being mistreated often though receiving enough care to live a long life while someone in another country may receive a far better level of care in their old age but die earlier because they had better access to unhealthy foods throughout their life. Or, someone may live longer through heroic means of end-of-life care (intubation, forced feedings, resuscitation, artificial respiration, etc.) which extends their nominal life though may not extend the time period of their life where they are actually properly living. Even more importantly, this is just a shitty infographic, there is no sourcing, no description of the methodology and standards of data gathering and analysis. And yet this comes from an alleged news organization. The quality of this "report" is below the standard that would be accepted in elementary school.