A few tidbits from research I'm doing for a presentation:
United States
Annual income per capita: $44,070
Annual health care expense per capita: $6,174
%GDP on health care: 15.30
HCPC/IPC: 14.01
Lifetime expense (male): $463,050
Lifetime expense (female): $493,920
Life expectancy (male): 75
Life expectancy (female): 80
Healthy life expectancy (male): 67
Healthy life expectancy (female): 71
Deaths per 1000, 15-60 (male): 137
Deaths per 1000, 15-60 (female): 80
Child mortality rate (per 1000 under 5): 8
Infant mortality rate (per 1000): 7
Neonatal mortality rate (per 1000 births): 4
Child mortality (annual): 35,000
Maternal mortality ratio (per 1000 births, reported): 8
Maternal mortality ratio (per 1000 births, adjusted): 11
Finland
Annual income per capita: $33,170
Annual health care expense per capita: $2,472
%GDP on health care: 7.60
HCPC/IPC: 7.45
Lifetime expense (male): $187,872
Lifetime expense (female): $205,176
Life expectancy (male): 76
Life expectancy (female): 83
Healthy life expectancy (male): 69
Healthy life expectancy (female): 71
Deaths per 1000, 15-60 (male): 132
Deaths per 1000, 15-60 (female): 57
Child mortality rate (per 1000 under 5): 3
Infant mortality rate (per 1000): 3
Neonatal mortality rate (per 1000 births): 2
Child mortality (annual): 35,000
Maternal mortality ratio (per 1000 births, reported): 6
Maternal mortality ratio (per 1000 births, adjusted): 7
HCPC/IPC is the ratio of Health Care Per Capita (dollars) to Income Per Capita (also dollars).
The figures for Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are comparable to Finland's, if not quite as impressive.
The numbers that stand out to me are the per capita incomes. In essence, they suggest that it's possible to reduce American's per capita income by 25% and still deliver better and more efficient health care. I'm not suggesting that everyone's pay get cut by a fourth, but consider where American health care could be given the great wealth of our country...
Sharon considers the angles. This one is a beaut:
Continuing with this week's musical theme:
I said to Hank Williams, how lonely does it get?Hank Williams hasn't answered yetBut I hear him coughing all night longA hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song
Leonard speaks for all songwriters in this quatrain: Whatever I know about loneliness, Hank Williams knows more. However good a songwriter I am, Hank Williams is a hundred floors above me. And all we mere mortals can ask for is an enigmatic cough of inspiration.
Now there's a guy who knows how to make an exit!
Now there's a guy who knows how to make an exit!
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6 comments:
I have friends in Denmark who are always tsk, tsking me over our health care system. There's something to be said for government sponsored, single payer, cradle-to-grave coverage. There's something obscene about viewing health care as a for-profit industry!
Ah! More Leonard. With a nice little nod to Hank. Great stuff!
No one is more for single payer than I am. But for a number of reasons -- some of which I've written about and some of which I will write about -- I regard it as an impossibility in the current American political climate. Ten years ago I would have regarded what I'm about to write as apostasy, but the best we can do write now is to chip away. The new health care law is not what I would write, but at least someone swung an axe and hit a tree.
K - forgive my going off topic but I hope your new running back hires a driver and finds a shooting range where he can practice with his various gats. He will do well to get his medical chronic card asap too if you have those in Seattle. His contribution to the community will be forthcoming, the only question is how exactly Marshawn will roll up his sleeves and leave a mark on his new hometown. We'll take a 4th rounder and a box of tape and call it even, Peace.
I have never made enough money to afford health care.....if I paid money for health care I'd starve to death and wouldn't need it. Hrrmph!
Rasta, we haven't had an RB gain 1000 yds in 4-5 years. We haven't had one score a touchdown in nine games. Right now, I'd hand the ball of to John Boner if he could take it the end zone.
Ima, I'm compiling this information for a presentation on countries that provide health care under what is know as the Beveridge model. It's named after William Beveridge, a British economist and social reformer who published a report in 1942 that became the basis of the British welfare state. As part of the report, he wrote that no individual should be denied health care because of an inability to pay.
The government is spending lot of amount on the health issues. But as the money is spent the whole of the treatment is not provided in the same manner.
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