The United States has one of the most inefficient health care systems in the world? huffingtonpost/2013/08/29/most-efficient-healthcare_n_3825477.html Please notice the portion on how these numbers were determined. "Each country was ranked on three criteria: 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. Included were countries with populations of at least five million, GDP per capita of at least $5,000 and life expectancy of at least 70 years." The US seems to be inefficient, where is all this money going? Well, the U.S. spends about twice as much in R&D as anyone else, meaning we spend far more on development than anyone else. Since this is not accounted for, of course we seem highly inefficient. If you include research spending in your analysis of application efficiency, your results will clearly be skewed. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), total health care spending in the U.S. was 17.9% of its GDP in 2011 ($2.7 trillion), the highest in the world. The Health and Human Services Department expects that the health share of GDP will continue its historical upward trend, reaching 19.5% of GDP by 2017. Of each dollar spent on health care in the United States, 31% goes to hospital care, 21% goes to physician/clinical services, 10% to pharmaceuticals, 4% to dental, 6% to nursing homes and 3% to home health care, 3% for other retail products, 3% for government public health activities, 7% to administrative costs, 7% to investment, and 6% to other professional services (physical therapists, optometrists, etc.). This graphic is a misrepresentation, and proof that "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." Who controls the information, who interprets and formulates policy?
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 19:57:15 +0000
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