> I think the idea that we are spending too much of our wealth on education and healthcare is... wrong.[...]I don't think spending 17% of our GDP on healthcare is a problem (assuming we're receiving good benefits from that, which I think we are)
You're missing a dimension to both of these numbers: Outcome. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other country — but not with better health outcomes [0].
"The US stands out as an outlier: it spends far more on health than any other country, yet the life expectancy of the American population is not longer, but actually shorter than in other countries that spend far less." [1]
One explanation of the difference in outcomes, especially your "Number of deaths per 100,000 from preventable diseases or complications had adequate healthcare been available, in 2013" statistic has mostly to do with accessibility. Lack of access. That, and a cultural avoidance of seeking help, but I bet it's mostly the lack of access.
If you have bad insurance? there's huge variance in what a procedure will cost, and in my experience, hospitals aren't setup to deal with the "how much is this going to cost me?" question.
The ACA may have helped with this. With my yearly out of pocket limits, I have some peace of mind that it won't, at least, go over that.
Personally, I think we can continue to compare this to the education system, we need something like 'community colleges' - Sure, you need paperwork and to go through a bunch of hoops if you want to go to Stanford- and you get a better product than at the community college, if you can make it, but anyone can walk into the community college and get half a pretty decent education that is almost completely paid for by the government. I think we need something similar in medicine... a place anyone can walk in where they know they can get care that meets minimal government standards that is next to free.
But... my point is just that making the whole system cheaper is not the best way to solve that. We don't want to replace Stanford with the University of Phoenix.
To continue my analogy, the private sector does beautifully at the high end, in both schooling and medicine. To bring back the University of Phoenix example, at the low end? I would much rather have the low end government product than the low end private sector product.
It's precisely about lack of access, hence the conclusion of the quote: ".. had adequate healthcare been available." There is a cultural avoidance of seeking help because the help will bankrupt you. Because it's too expensive.
Making it cheaper = better access = better health outcomes. How do we know? Every other industrialized nation does it better than we do for cheaper.
>Making it cheaper = better access = better health outcomes. How do we know? Every other industrialized nation does it better than we do for cheaper.
My understanding was that the nations that have better outcomes for the poor tax people and use that money to pay for government supervised medical care, and that it's the government paying for and supervising the care that leads to better access.
Private sector solutions, as I said before, seem to work extraordinarily well for the rich, both in medicine and education. If Stanford will let me in, sign me up. But, when I am shopping on the low end? I want some government intervention. Cheap private sector medicine, I suspect, would look a lot like cheap private sector education... ITT tech, Corinthian Colleges, or at best, the university of phoenix.
You're missing a dimension to both of these numbers: Outcome. The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other country — but not with better health outcomes [0].
"The US stands out as an outlier: it spends far more on health than any other country, yet the life expectancy of the American population is not longer, but actually shorter than in other countries that spend far less." [1]
[0]http://beta.latimes.com/nation/la-na-healthcare-comparison-2...
[1]https://ourworldindata.org/the-link-between-life-expectancy-...