<<
qualiall_2 at yahoo.com wrote:
> Subject: Re: A conservative sees the light
> >http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0309-03.htm
> >Published on Friday, March 9, 2001 in the International Herald
Tribune
> >A Conservative Convert To Socialized Medicine
> >by David Burgess
The original of the article appears at the Int'l Herald Tribune site:
http://www.iht.com/articles/12871.htm
> >Why the difference? Take a deep breath. These are the numbers,
> > provided by
> >the French and British health ministries and translated into dollars
> >(bear
> >in mind that Britain and France have roughly the same populations).
> >French
> >total expenditure on health in 1999 was $109.5 billion. In Britain it
> >was
> >about $78.02 billion. Per capita, it was $1,800 in France and $1,312
> >in Britain. As a percentage of the gross domestic product, it was 8.5
> >percent
> >in France and 5.9 percent in Britain.
And in the US, it was over $4,000 per capita in 1997 (!). That's 13.6 percent of GDP vs. 8.5 percent in France. The OECD average in 1997 was $1,747. Some more factoids at:
http://www.cmwf.org/programs/international/ihp_1998_multicompsurvey_299. asp
"Among seven countries [Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States] in 1996, the United States spent the largest percentage of total health spending on physician services and the least on pharmaceuticals... while France spent the most on pharmaceuticals and the least on physicians."
I'm not sure if it's possible to draw any conclusions from the above, but it's interesting nonetheless. Wait, here's part of it -
"International comparisons suggest two areas that are partially responsible for the higher spending in the United States: hospital costs per day and average physician incomes. The former was five times the OECD median, and latter was two to three times larger than other industrialized countries."
Apparently New Zealand and the UK both spent 23 percent less than the per capita median of $1,747. Is health care in New Zealand as bad as that would imply?
>>
Although the US spends 13.6 % of GDP on health care, I hope nobody concludes that our system is good (I'm sure dave doesn't -- I just want to emphasize this point).
When you consider that about 43 million Americans have no health care coverage and little health care except emergency room service, you realize that in the US we pay a hell of a lot for relatively little.
Dean Baker comments that our health care spending is so high (for so little) that it is in a league of its own. The average (for 1995) is 8.1 % of GDP among the OECD countries. Our high figure is really how bad our system is.
[Dean Baker's figure is 14.2 % of GDP but I guess that is due to him using 1995 figures. See _Social Security: The Phony Crisis_.]
I didn't want to let this one get away.
-- John K. Taber