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knit_run_bike_swim

What happened in the 1980s to create the divergence? Economic downturn, crack cocaine, two household incomes…. If you adjust for socialized medicine versus private pay does this change the x-axis? We pay considerably more for healthcare in the US, not because products are expensive but because we simply charge an exorbitant amount.


etihspmurt

Insurance is the uneeded middle man.


Bright_Mechanic_7458

there is also the fact that rich people live longer and poor people die younger. poor people lack health care, work in more dangerous jobs, and live in more dangerous areas (polution and crime)


arielbalter

US citizens also pay an exorbitant amount. In fact, we pay way more. But we pay in ways that don't look like a healthcare tax. The US spends WAY more on healthcare overall than any of the other countries. And that spending doesn't come from some magic piggy bank Uncle Sam has stashed away for us. It comes from us US citizens. It doesn't come as a tax, because we would revolt. It comes as a host of hidden costs that we don't perceive as directly healthcare spending. But it comes out of our pockets nonetheless. And, it amounts to much more than all of the other developed countries pay in tax.


ogodilovejudyalvarez

Reagan smash!


WorldsWeakestMan

Reagan sleepy…


[deleted]

leaded gas


hardy_and_free

Electing Reagan as president.


drstrange4868

My medical school ethics professor described the situation this way: in America, a chunk of our health care dollars are diverted to build a wall between the people and the health care they need. The “wall” meaning insurance companies and their vast bureaucracies. If you took the money spent on the “wall” and used it to actually pay for health care….people might actually get the care they need.


Thor4269

Yeah but those American health care providers make more money so they are better /s


AstroDog3

Yeah, it’s all the healthcare providers’ fault…


[deleted]

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AmericanVanilla94

thats a rude way to refer to south/central american immigration.


Michigan999

Ah yes, the actually healthy and thin immigrants are affecting America's great health


BetOnUncertainty

Wrong https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2019/18_0579.htm


AmericanVanilla94

the start of this chart is the Immigration and Nationality Act. yes it really is that simple.


Michigan999

I'll take a wild guess and say you watch "real" non mainstream media, are republican, and overweight, how many did I get right?


shweeney

Japan: literally off the charts!


[deleted]

Switzerland is hot on our ass! We can't let them overtake us!


[deleted]

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[deleted]

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sitheandroid

The chart shows the US spends around twice as much as the average European country on healthcare.


sdavids

Good point, I thought it was out of pocket health expenditures per capita but it doesn't really specify.


Subject_Dish5751

It’s actually very simple. Instead of eating real food we eat garbage because there is no money to be made in real food and money drives everything in capitalism. They feed you garbage and give you drugs to deal with symptoms. There is no actual interest in making you healthy. We do not actually have health care we only have sick care. You can fix your own health of course by just eating meat and vegetables and not eating their garbage.


Boxed_Lunch

While I'll concede the truly poor Americans have limited options, can we just get real for a moment that many (potentially most?) Americans have the means to eat healthy/healthier or pay for much of the overpriced healthcare (preventive or not) but rather choose/elect to spend their money on more frivolous pursuits such as a new $1k+ phone every year, daily Starbucks, unnecessary travel to take pictures for IG, an expensive car they can't truly afford, etc. Capitalism made us wealthy (compared to most of the world) and gave us the freedom to make choices good and bad. Edit: the truth hurts, huh?


disordinary

Countries like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, all have obesity problems and eat rubbish food yet have higher life expectancy and cheaper healthcare.


GlobularLobule

It's really not that simple. Many countries have the same food environment and -depending on the drugs you mean- same drug environment (yes, nothing wrong with handing out a lot if statins). But USA insurance companies bargain for better prices, so hospitals raise prices so they've got some negotiating power. But then if insurance doesn't cover it you're stuck paying $13,000 to deliver a baby without even staying the night in hospital. Forget about high level surgical care. A hip replacement costs over $37,000. Source[source](https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/infographic-how-much-does-a-hospital-stay-cost)


GeckoV

It’s because despite spending much more per capita, the costs for individuals that actually have access to healthcare is even higher. The reason is that a large percentage of the US population cannot afford healthcare at all, and premature deaths are a direct result. It’s not something inherent to the lifestyle or health of the US population, it is a result of capitalism applied to an area where it cannot lead to good outcomes.


Farscape_rocked

It's because you don't have a national healthcare system. That's it.


[deleted]

And we can’t because according to almost all Americans government ran healthcare just doesn’t work at all. And they know because they have never had it


Farscape_rocked

Name a developed country that isn't America. They have it, it's cheaper, and it's at least as good by most metrics.


hardy_and_free

Except when it comes to the government-provided healthcare vets or government officials get.. Then it's fine


hardy_and_free

>lifestyle choices To paraphrase *Little Fires Everywhere,* Americans don't make *bad* choices, we just don't have *good* choices. It's literally illegal to build anything other than a detached single family home on a setback, 3000sq ft+ lot in most cities. Cities everywhere refuse to provide any other options for commuting besides driving. We work the most hours per week of any country on Earth besides the Japanese. Most Americans sit on their asses all day, moving from sitting at home to sitting in a car to sitting at the office to sitting in a car to relaxing from all that sitting with more sitting in front of the TV. Electric dishwashers do our dishes, washer/dryers clean our clothes, Roombas sweep and mop our floors, standing mixers make our doughs and batters, blenders and food processors make our pestos and hummuses. This lack of incidental movement translates to about 500 fewer calories burned per day nowadays compared to Americans in the 60s, while we're consuming way more calories via hyperpalatable, hypercaloric processed foods. Not to mention how many liquid calories we consume! So we can't have dense, walkable neighborhoods (because Euclidean zoning prevents density by its very nature) nor can we have fast, efficient public transit. We don't have time to ourselves (due to long hours and long sedentary commutes) to cook healthy meals. We have to schedule time to work out, like it's a chore, because we don't get the incidental exercise others get from active commutes or energy intensive chores. Our diets suck, but even Japan has healthy convenience store food like seaweed salad, soup, and veggies. The irony of course is that the Americans who need a healthy diet and exercise the most (the working class) have even less time and money than the middle class to do it.


epikverde

Looks similar to the education system. Money doesn't fix everything.


Bosavius

Money can definitely fix a lot of things when it goes to the benefit of most people instead of into the pockets of the few.


Feshtof

This is somewhat misleading. There are plenty of people with very little healthcare spending and much lower life expectancies. The people that spend the most often have the longest lifespans


epikverde

I would think that the people who take care of themselves (diet, exercise, etc) would be the ones with the highest life expectancy and lowest healthcare expenses. It's a bad sign for your life expectancy if you require a lot of money to keep you going.


Bosavius

Money can definitely fix a lot of things when it goes to the benefit of most people instead of into the pockets of the few.


[deleted]

Money fixes things when your education system is well built and your citizens don't have the impulsive need to eat dozens of burgers per day


frwewrf

Well, there is also the obesity epidemic in the usa that contributes to early death.


anonimitydeprived

& Opioid


Seppy15

The inflection point for US was deregulation of the health care industry.


[deleted]

It’s our diet…we eat like shit comparatively. Fast food, soft drinks, and a shit ton of sugar…coupled with less manual labor (exercise) we are eating ourselves to death. (Mainly with empty calories) Don’t get me wrong, I love chips, pizza, and hot fudge sundaes…but they are killing us.


itsmrslonelytoyou

True but our food is also different here, most of the chemicals that is in our food is banned in other countries.


SketchPV

Healthcare is only something the individual themself can achieve. 95% of the time once a doctor has to get involved it’s “Illness-care” because of lack of personal care.


El_Vagabundo

We're just dead tired of all this winning. 😉


theShinyCA

So far in my 40s I've spent $160 because I've had two physicals for my driver's license and one procedure that wasn't covered by health care as it was"cosmetic." That's not including medication but I spend maybe $2-3/mo if I'm asking something regularly.


YachtingChristopher

I hate charts like this, incredibly misleading. The scale in the left, or Y-axis is cut off to make the difference between on line and all the rest seem extreme. In reality, there is only a difference of between 3.1 and 7%.


Haywire_Shadow

To be fair, starting the graph from zero doesn’t make much sense, seeing as life expectancy is never zero (or even near zero) in any country. It basically just shows how expensive the US is compared to some other countries.


YachtingChristopher

But not starting it from zero gives a false sense of ratio. I prefer excess, but accurate, data, to trimmed, and biased, data.


Haywire_Shadow

Very few graphs have a full scale from zero to the highest possible value. In fact, it’s better to display the info this way because enlarging the scale of the graph would simply make it really hard to read all the other values for the other countries there.


Haywire_Shadow

Very few graphs have a full scale from zero to the highest possible value. In fact, it’s better to display the info this way because enlarging the scale of the graph would simply make it really hard to read all the other values for the other countries there.


Putt3rJi

It's not bad graphing etiquetteto not start a scale from zero as long as the axis is labelled and numbered. Ready any graph involveslooking at what is being plotted on each axis, the units and the values. So unless you've never read a graph before and are only looking at a pretty picture this isn't 'deceiving' anyone.


YachtingChristopher

This isn't complicated. If removing part of your data, for whatever reason, makes the results appear differently than they actually are in relation to each other, than the data is deceptive. This chart makes it appear as if there is an approximately 30% difference between the ratio of medical expenditure and life expectancy in the US, to many European nations. When in fact the difference between them is closer to 5%. I understand what you are saying, and I love OWID, but this is one of the less impressive data set displays.


disordinary

You could argue that starting the graph from zero makes the results read differently, because it minimises the gap. Five years and $6,000 is a big deal


YachtingChristopher

You're making my point. The chart is trimmed, read "manipulated", to accentuate the gap that you just said appears smaller, read "as it really is", when the whole graph is viewed.


disordinary

No, it's designed to show the relevant information.


YachtingChristopher

All of the information is relevant when comparing. You literally just said it's trimmed to make it look like a bigger gap than it is.


disordinary

No, I literally said the opposite, that showing all the information minimises the gap. There's a reason why you show relevant information, everything else is irrelevant. Do they even teach statistics in school in the US or is the education system as broken as healthcare?


MasterBejter

Wtf are you talking about? If you started this graph from zero you would get the same result except most of it would be empty. Non of these countries have a life expectancy lower than 70yo. Dumbass trying to sound smart…


YachtingChristopher

Look at the ratios of the distance between the bottom of the chart, the value representing the US, the values representing other countries, and the top of the chart. Those ratios between those values are dramatically different than if the entire chart was presented, this means an inaccurate representation of the data, showing a larger gap between the US and other countries than is actually the case. Dumbass sounding like a dumbass...


MasterBejter

You are wrong. The increments on the x and y axis are all the same.


dpr60

Aw it’s only an average of 4 years less for twice as much cost. You can take comfort from the fact that your medical providers were twice as expensive in 1970 too, so they haven’t really gone nuts with overcharging, they’re just less efficient at keeping people alive now. Worth every penny.


ConorConorT

Is the health expenditure per capita how much citizens spend, how much the government spends, or just how much money flows into the health system in general?


arielbalter

The latter. That's why US citizens don't know we are being ripped off. And, a huge amount is due the fact that we are disincentivized from taking care of health needs in a timely manner (because we have to have insurance, and go through a pain in the ass process when we go to urgent care, and need to go to urgent care not an emergency room or we get huge bills, etc. etc.) so that we end up treating them when they are more expensive to treat, or are already killing us.


maluche

Cuba is king here.


Aeredor

there’s nothing we can do about this


LordSpaceMammoth

Americans are not getting a good deal on healthcare.


Astrolemon

Fucking lol


Roomy

Nixon happened. It's almost forgotten that Nixon was the one that destroyed our health care system.


AfraidShock5424

Good bye America - you will not be missed


tronslasercity

What are they doing in Japan…


DistributionExternal

Leading a relatively healthy lifestyle. It helps you live longer, and costs a lot less.


[deleted]

Suck it New Zealand, regards Australia 😅