Visualizing health care expenses
March 25, 2012 8 Comments
Student sent me this link from a nice Atlantic post, “10 ways to visualize how Americans spend money on health care.” There’s some very good ones here. I’m most fond of this:
1) U.S. AGAINST THE WORLD: SPENDING VS. LIFE EXPECTANCY
We spend much, much more per person than the rest of the world … but we don’t live much longer than some eastern European countries that spend much less than us. As a result, when you plot the United States against similarly advanced countries based on life expectancy and medical spending, we’re all alone on our little island.
I’m sure of we repealed the Affordable Care Act and simply allowed health insurance competition between states this would all be remedied.
About Steve Greene
Fully Myelinated 
Once again we agree on something
John Wilder
One has to ask if there was always a simple fix then it would have been implemented long ago. If it hasn’t then perhaps it’s not such a simple fix.
“One has to ask if there was always a simple fix then it would have been implemented long ago.”
This is not necessarily true. There could be groups that do not benefit from a fix.
Sure but the question needs to be ask, How many people can be helped by the fix. The more the better, right?
Also, this leaves aside the fact that apparently I need a sarcasm font. Nonetheless, Taiwan actually studies all advanced democracies for best practices in instituting a new national healthcare system and decided upon a single payer. In one sense, it would be fairly simple in the US– basically expand Medicare from 65 down to 0. In another sense, you are talking about upsetting a whole mess of status quo and income streams. And that is anything but simple.
“Sure but the question needs to be ask, How many people can be helped by the fix. The more the better, right?”
I didn’t make my point well enough. There could be groups in power that do not want a fix — even though it would be the best thing for most citizens — because they benefit from the status quo.
For instance, one could argue that we’d benefit by having more than two major political parties and that the fix wouldn’t be complicated. But the parties in power have no incentive to allow that to happen.
I think your logic works in some situations, but not in others. Since there *are* countries with better health care solutions, we know it can be done. You might argue that America is a special, or more complicated, case where those other solutions won’t work, and that may be true, but it’s not the only possible explanation.
You might argue that America is a special, or more complicated, case where those other solutions won’t work, and that may be true, but it’s not the only possible explanation.
Or, it just might be that the political system has been captured by the insurance companies (huge quantities of money).
In British Columbia, the province created a government corporation (decades ago) to provide the mandatory vehicle insurance because of the public outcry over insurance companies overcharging for insurance but finding every reason not to pay out when there was an accident.
This sounds very much like the problem with US and healthcare insurance.
I’m pretty sure a lot of people would run around screaming “socialism” if anyone even suggested such a thing, even though it appears that in some instances capitalism simply doesn’t work for the benefit of the society, and often is very disruptive.
Why have a reasoned argument when you can simply shout out the current talking points?