>Before you all go thinking that two people get great health care
>coverage for $1400/year, the last time we discussed this, I pointed out
>that these premiums are _in addition_ to the estimated $0.43/$ of income
>taxes that go to the health program. So ... it's quite a bit more than
>$1400. If your dad is above median, he's probably in the 45% bracket or
>so, so figure in addition to the $1400 about 25% of his gross income.
>
>It's true: you don't have to pay for stealth bombers in Canada, but
>although the health care coverage is comprehensive, it isn't, uh, cheap.
Depends on what you mean by cheap. Here's some stuff from the OECD. Note that the US spends more than twice as much as the OECD average (excluding the US) in PPP US dollars, and almost twice as much as a percent of GDP. We spend almost twice as much as Canada in dollar terms, and half again as much as a share of GDP.
And our outcomes, measured by life expectancy, kinda suck. Our life expectancy is about half a year less than the non-US average. A simple regression of life expectancy on the log of PPP spending (excluding the US) produces a good fit: adj r2 = .69. On the basis of that regression, Americans should live 82.2 years. On average, we live 5 years less than that. Canada's almost right on the nose. By this measure, Japan does very well. We're the worst by far.
Doug
----
health indicators, 2003
health spending life expectancy
------------------------ ----------------------------
level
% of ---------------
GDP US$PPP US=100 actual predicted* difference
Australia 9.3% $2,699 48 80.3 79.2 +1.1 Austria 7.6% 2,280 40 78.6 78.5 +0.1 Belgium 9.6% 2,827 50 78.1 79.4 -1.3 Canada 9.9% 3,003 53 79.7 79.6 +0.1 Czech Repub 7.5% 1,298 23 75.3 76.2 -0.9 Denmark 9.0% 2,763 49 77.2 79.3 -2.1 Finland 7.4% 2,118 38 78.5 78.2 +0.3 France 10.1% 2,903 52 79.4 79.5 -0.1 Germany 11.1% 2,996 53 78.4 79.6 -1.2 Greece 9.9% 2,011 36 78.1 78.0 +0.1 Hungary 7.8% 1,115 20 72.4 75.6 -3.2 Iceland 10.5% 3,115 55 80.6 79.8 +0.8 Ireland 7.3% 2,386 42 77.8 78.7 -0.9 Italy 8.4% 2,258 40 79.9 78.5 +1.4 Japan 7.9% 2,139 38 81.8 78.2 +3.6 Korea 5.6% 1,074 19 76.9 75.4 +1.5 Luxembourg 6.1% 3,190 57 78.2 79.9 -1.7 Mexico 6.2% 583 10 74.9 72.9 +2.0 Netherlands 9.8% 2,976 53 78.6 79.6 -1.0 New Zealand 8.1% 1,886 33 78.7 77.7 +1.0 Norway 10.3% 3,807 68 79.5 80.6 -1.1 Poland 6.0% 677 12 74.7 73.5 +1.2 Portugal 9.6% 1,797 32 77.3 77.5 -0.2 Slovak Repub 5.9% 777 14 73.9 74.1 -0.2 Spain 7.7% 1,835 33 80.5 77.6 +2.9 Sweden 9.2% 2,594 46 80.2 79.0 +1.2 Switzerland 11.5% 3,781 67 80.4 80.6 -0.2 Turkey 6.6% 452 8 68.7 71.9 -3.2 United Kingdom 7.7% 2,231 40 78.5 78.4 +0.1 United States 15.0% 5,635 100 77.2 82.2 -5.0
average ex-US 8.4% 2,192 39 77.8 77.8 +0.0
----------------
*Predicted from this regression formula:
y = 9.40789x + 46.91204, r2 = .68506
where
y = life expectancy
x = log(spending)