Are You Feeling Lonely?

Outlier (noun): (1) a person whose residence and place of business are at a distance; (2) something (as a geological feature) that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body; (3) a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released Health at a Glance, its 2013 report on the performance of health systems in its member nations. Here is one of the charts.

The vertical dimension is life expectancy in years. On the horizontal is health care spending per person in US dollars. The line is the curve which best fits the data. It has both a linear component—as health care spending goes up, life expectancy increases—and a quadratic component—as spending increases, each dollar spent has diminishing returns. The United States is an outlier. We are spending quite a bit more (about $2400 per person more) than any other country, but our life expectancy is 26^th out of the 40 countries, almost one year lower than the international average. Another way of looking at it is that the two countries closest to us in life expectancy, Chile and the Czech Republic, are spending less than a quarter of what we're spending per capita on health care.

We're spending lots of money, but not getting a good return on our investment. A substantial portion of the money is being spent not on improved health care services, but rather on ever higher profits for private insurers, drug companies, and giant hospital chains.

The next time a politician says we have “the best health care system in the world,” you are free to burst out laughing.

You may also be interested in reading:

Where's the Outrage?

Why Are American Health Care Costs So High?