Comment by smcl
12 days ago
I mean if you want to compare the US to Angola, Yemen etc then hell yeah it's "great" and you can sorta kid yourself you're up there with the best of the bunch. But as a wealthy nation that is a pretty low bar and really shouldn't be what you're aiming for. Perhaps I didn't word that very well - you're having some of the worst healthcare outcomes among all of the planets developed nations despite spending the most on it. Like it is shocking how much of an outlier the USA is, there are multiple things you can measure but a really nice simple one people can wrap their head around is life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health.... When you plot it against average annual expenditure it is clear that you're getting a truly terrible deal.
I dunno what to tell you man, it sounds like you're a true believer on this. I reckon everyone who has undergone a healthcare bankruptcy (a uniquely American thing, btw) or could not get treated be cause they couldn't afford it was a true believer before they were let down.
Those plots are meaningless because countries measure things differently. Many countries for example don't count anyone before they are a year old while the US does. The US shows up very well for life expectancy, yes it costs a lot more to get there the outcomes of the US healthcare system are very good according to your own data (which as I said isn't good data, but it is data)
Honestly this has been extensively studied and the "the US gets shocking value for money and poor health outcomes" is the consensus. You can either take that as a personal insult, dig your heels in and say "the data is wrong" or "they're lying", blame immigrants or other things I've seen some Americans do when their "we're #1" belief is challenged ... or you can take notice and demand better from your country.
It is really of no consequence to me which you choose, I don't live there and it's looking likely I'll probably skip even visiting let alone consider moving there in future.
You changed your arrguement. You started with the us has terrible outtomes. When I refuted that you changed to value.
I am not desputing that we spend far too much for what we get. I am desputing the solution.
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