Does the U.S. have the best health care system in the world?
I saw this interesting graph today that plots the life expectancy in each country versus the amount that the country spends per person on health care. In general, countries that spend more money on health care have a higher life expectancy. But there is one enormous outlier:
(The area of the circle for each country is proportional to the number of doctor visits per person.)
As a statistician, I recognize that there are probably some confounding variables here. Still, I found it astonishing that life expectancy in the U.S. is so much lower than it is in numerous other countries that spend far less than the U.S. on health care. The idea that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world is a very popular conservative talking point these days. But I haven't seen a whole lot of hard data to support that particular assertion. From my point of view, most of the data suggests that our current health care system is an abysmal failure.
(The area of the circle for each country is proportional to the number of doctor visits per person.)
As a statistician, I recognize that there are probably some confounding variables here. Still, I found it astonishing that life expectancy in the U.S. is so much lower than it is in numerous other countries that spend far less than the U.S. on health care. The idea that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world is a very popular conservative talking point these days. But I haven't seen a whole lot of hard data to support that particular assertion. From my point of view, most of the data suggests that our current health care system is an abysmal failure.