USA vs other developed countries: healthcare expenditure vs. life expectancy
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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What’s the argument for keep a for profit system? What do we get in exchange for higher cost and lower life expectancy?
Looking at this graph, one might be led to believe that US citizens are getting conned.
Yeah… that’s what happens when you leave healthcare as a for-profit industry.
Well well, another batshit trend tracing right back to the Reagan era.
Huh, what happened in 1984…
oh…and for those who think it might have gotten better since 2018 (the last data point here), welp, no, it has not.
No wonder doctors from all over the world come here. You don’t have to deal with the patients for as long and you make a lot more money!
Plenty of sources for this, yet this is from Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
The US healthcare payment system is totally broken AND we’re not getting to live longer even though we pay vastly more than other countries.
One of the rare situations in which time should actually be on the y axis
Note: The USA actually has about the highest life expectancy if “non-medical” causes of death are removed.
The medical system cannot completely control homicide, or suicide, or car accidents, or lifestyle diseases, or various other things that are different in the USA vs. Europe/SK/Japan/AUS/NZ.
In fact, the USA has very good *medical* outcomes *compared to other countries* for each of these various events.
There *certainly* are health issues in the USA, but the medical system itself is not poor. It is absolutely *expensive*, but we do get a *little* more for the vastly higher costs.
Left out of this equation is the American food system and work and competitive culture.
I bet that is a big part of it on top of everything.
However we’re also significantly less healthy (more obese etc) than just about all of those countries as well which would drive costs up and life expectancy down.
I’ll get downloaded into the basement for this but…
Something most miss here is the cultural differences in how the populations view the activities that maintain lifespan and health span: physical activity, extended dinners with family, eating fruits and veggies, etc.
Most of those other countries walk or bike to work and the store, eat slow dinners around the dinner table, eat meals filled with complex carbs, fruits, and veggies.
The US (where I live) drives everywhere, eats more fast food when convenient, prefers lots of fatty meat and processed carbs.
If just 90 minutes of exercise a week cuts your risk of death by all causes by 15%, no wonder countries who walk/bike to work live longer…
This is very misleading since there’s a lot more correlation between life expectancy and other variables such as obesity, car crashes, suicide, etc. Even looking at the US, the overall life expectancy is much lower in the MidWest and South, primarily because of obesity. Life expectancy for US states on the West Coast and Northeast are comparable to Europe.
It’s because we are fat. Japanese Americans have a longer life expectancy than people living in Japan. Its culture, not private healthcare.
Honestly this is a bad graph. Put time on the x axis. Make a division of life expectancy vs dollars spent or another parameter that provides the relative cost to life expectancy on the y side.
That or use colors for life expectancy or money spend or a 2nd axis.
I do think the food culture is much better in the countries that are showing higher life expectancy
So rather than having to fight health care insurance to cover the cost, the Government will just US AI when they control health care to decide who get’s it and who does not.
Because Americans are fat and sedentary.
where could all that money be going? hmmmmm
It’s interesting Europe, Australia, Japan etc have far stricter food regulations than America. Working in the supplements industry for a while we had to have watered down products for these countries as half the ingredients we used for the American versions were banned.
Just to play devils advocate for a second.
It is undeniable that the American healthcare system is broken and extremely inefficient in terms of cost. HOWEVER, this is a terrible graph to demonstrate that point.
If we spend money on treating disease, we would expect to spend more money if we treat more disease.Â
Therefore, if we can assume that a lower life expectancy indicates more disease, then we can expect a lower life expectancy to be correlated with higher healthcare expenditure.
A high life expectancy with low spending means that there isn’t any disease that needs money to treat. A low life expectancy with low expenditure means the country doesn’t have a competent healthcare system. A high life expectancy with high spending doesn’t exist because we haven’t found any medication better than disease prevention. A low life expectancy with high spending is what we have.
These type of arguments seem to always miss a key piece and get framed as anti American. The cost of treating rare diseases that don’t have a huge effect of average life expectancy is a major driver of the US expenditure.
The US is the number one place for cutting edge medicine. Most clinical trials are run in the US first and then in other countries some time later or never. Most approved therapies are found in the US at least one full year before approval in another country. These therapies are very expensive but increase the life expectancy of those receiving them. The US has a better life expectancy for patients with cancer than other nations as a result of this.
Tell me how much of it is spent on administrative overhead vs actual medical expenses.
Interesting that Switzerland is the closest to us in spend because they have a fully privatized healthcare system. The difference? Their government caps the maximum amount unlike the US. That’s a system I could see the US adopting. Not public but better. Hopefully one day.
People are wondering why a health insurance CEO was killed
Clear evidence of American democrazy. Stop voting against your own self-interests.
Then, everything changed when Ronald Reagan attacked
Have y’all seen the latest pharmaceutical commercial? If I’m not allergic to the drug and don’t die, I can have multicultural friends and a dog! I’m super excited about the friends! Just need a prescription…I think I have mesothelioma, eczema, and/or chrons disease. Just waiting on my doctor for the diagnosis.
Below is a link to the most recent chart (and interactive!). The trends have not changed much since Covid-19.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure
Why does the y axis start at 70?
If you go to Europe or Asia it’s easy to understand. People walk everywhere. The lack of public transportation, condensed infrastructure, and having cities that aren’t conducive to walking or biking leads to an unhealthy society.