Thank the lawyers.
Bummer to see those socialized-medicine countries ahead of U.S.
In some spirit of fairness I’d like to know if Chile counts infant mortality the way we do.
Guess what, Weisenthal...that problem will be solved soon enough. You'll be hard pressed to find a doctor who specializes in clueless putz' soon enough with the shortages that are coming.
Import them from Chile.
Putz
Are we comparing apples to apples?
I’ve never been a big fan of using life expectancy as a measure against the cost of health care. Life expectancy is a single outcome composed of a whole slew of contributing variables.
So, where is Africa on the chart?
Life expectancy is probably more related to genes and lifestyle.
We have millions of obese sedentary individuals who do not watch their salt, fat and sugar intake even though they are genetically likely to develop diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. We have young inner city youths dragging down life expectancy with guns.
The best health care system in the world isn’t going to cure stupidity.
Haven't you heard? The coming economic collapse has officially been canceled. The U.S. economy is in full recovery mode. It has just been announced that the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8.9% in February. That was the third monthly decline in a row. 192,000 new jobs were created in the U.S. during February.
That was the fifth month in a row in which the U.S. economy has gained jobs. Corporate profits are way up. For the most recent month that numbers are available, sales of GM vehicles were up 49%, sales of Chrysler vehicles were up 13%, and sales of Ford vehicles were up 10%.
Just a few years ago, I could see a neighborhood doctor in his office for about $35. He look at me, talk to me, take care of what I needed, and be concerned about me.
Now the same doctor works for a regional health care system. He sees me for about 5 minutes, orders all kinds of expensive tests I don’t need, and seems to be more interested in giving me whatever the system wants him to sell today and what he can bill the insurance company for, rather than what I need.
I tried 3 other doctors, and it’s the same thing. The regional has bought out all the private practices, and blocked the start of a local out-patient clinic.
There no “free market” because the big boys shut out any competion, and regulation is designed to prevent new practices from opening up, rather than improve care.
American medicine has grown into a great dis-economy of scale and the politicians don’t have the guts to take on the health care industry.
I always have doubts about this international comparisons. None of them measure the degree to which lives are saved because care is available immediately when it is needed. Plus we are stuck with huge populations of people who come from backward countries or who live in a state of social anarchy, thanks to insane immigration and social welfare policies.
So does this cute little chart include back of pocket costs? The actual tax bill that makes medical care look cheap in socialized countries. Probably not. Meanwhile 78 is a long time.
My daughter is going to have ear tubes placed on Monday. The operation takes 30 minutes and she will stay in the hospital for 2 hours. The facility fee is $12,000. That doesn’t include the doctor or the anesthesiologist.
Just because Obamacare is not the solution does not mean that there is not a problem.
If the doc fails to order the exams and fails to diagnose one of these potentially lethal conditions, and the patient has an adverse outcome the doc (and his family) will suffer for it in many ways, for many years.
Understandible to me; order the tests and spread the cost around rather than takes society's (legal) responsibility solely on your own (and your family's) back.
Note: There are A LOT of headache, belly pain and shortness of breath visits. Also, all of the above also applies to other types of testing including laboratory.
The other big contributor is self-referral for above-described diagnostics.
I’m sure that many of the folks here, those who think that Bernanke is actually doing a good job(you know who they are - in 2007, they said there were no problems) will tell you that such charts are only created to cause panic. You are such a ‘doom and gloomer’.
Our economy will be fine. We’ll just “grow our way out” of this mess, since the mild recession has passed and we’re well on our way to recovery.............. (lol)
How much is the US average driven down by the metrics of infant mortality? In the US we count every live birth as a birth; in many countries an infant has to breathe on its own or even survive a full day or more to count as a live birth. Counting the births as we drives down the average age.
how does living longer reduce the train on Medicare ?
Life expectancy isn’t a homogenous number. First, the U.S. Counts deaths that others don’t. Second, small segments of the U.S. Population make up a large portion of the early life deaths that have nothing to do with healthcare, but which bring the total number down significantly.
If you are a non-criminal, productive citizen, you have an extremely high probability of living to be 90+.
Finally, you always get better bargains in the poorer neighborhoods and what is true locally is true globally. Doctors are not a large portion of your bill (less than an auto shop per hour labor), but an MD is going to want more in NYC than Mexico City, just as everyone here demands more than their Mexican counter part.
Not responding to comments blam? What’s up with that?
Doomed??
I wonder, can we can still afford 320,000,000 doses of grape Kool-Ade and enough strychnine to put us out of our misery?
If not, I going to proceed on as though I will survive ... even if Washington DC doesn’t.