On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 14:51 -0700, Technomage-hawke wrote:
> On Wednesday 13 February 2008 11:33, Craig White wrote:
> 
> > A simple question for those who assert that the health care system as
> > practiced in the United States is the best, why are infant mortality
> > rates so much higher here than elsewhere?
> >
> here is some more information you should read:
> GDP - per capita vs. Infant mortality rate:
> http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=67&v2=29&y=2003
> 
> U.S. Health Care Spending In An International Context:
> http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/23/3/10
> 
----
it would be nice if you could digest the information (just a bit at
least) before you linked it...

from the latter link...

Furthermore, as can be seen in Exhibit 1, U.S. per capita health
spending continued to exceed per capita health spending in the other
OECD countries, by huge margins, in 2001. After expenditures are
converted into purchasing-power parity international dollars (PPP$),
Switzerland spent only 68 percent as much on health care per capita in
2001 as the United States. Neighboring Canada, with a health care
delivery system and medical practice styles fairly similar to those in
the United States, spent only 57 percent as much per capita as the
United States. PPP-adjusted per capita spending in the median OECD
country was only 44 percent of the U.S. level (PPP$2,161). 

Finally, the median percentage of GDP absorbed by health care in the
non-U.S. OECD countries in 2001 was only 8.3 percent, compared with 13.9
percent in the United States. Although that percentage remained more or
less constant during the 1990s, during the previous two decades the
average annual growth of health spending exceeded the growth of total
GDP by 2.5–3 percent. U.S. government actuaries now project that during
2003–2013 U.S. health spending will revert to its traditional, long-term
trend. They project the annual growth in U.S. health spending to exceed
the annual growth in GDP once again by about two percentage points, and
total national health spending to absorb as much as 18.4 percent of U.S.
GDP by 2013.

*** Don't miss the significance of that last sentence ***

They project the annual growth in U.S. health spending to exceed the
annual growth in GDP once again by about two percentage points, and
total national health spending to absorb as much as 18.4 percent of U.S.
GDP by 2013.

*** wow ***

now - as to your first link...if you go to the bottom of the list (the
highest GDP per capita), note the value for the US and start to rise up
the list, the only countries that surpass the United States in infant
death rates for a very, very, very long time are Arab and Caribbean
countries...what does that tell you?

Craig

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