Health insurance and my inner statistics geek

I did a little research on the United States compared to other countries with universal health care. I was a little sloppy in my last health care post, saying national health care, when what I really meant was universal health care. There are options other than a nationalized health care system, like the U.K. has. I am not necessarily opposed to that – it’s just not the only choice.

I have a little statistics geek that comes out of me every so often, so here are some statistics for you – stats courtesy of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Source of health care funding: The public sector is the main source of health funding in all OECD countries, except for the United States, Mexico and Greece. In the United States, only 45.1% of health spending is funded by government revenues, well below the average of 72.5% in OECD countries. The public share of total health spending remains the lowest among OECD countries, after Greece. On the other hand, private insurance accounts for 37% of total health spending in the United States, by far the largest share among OECD countries. Beside the United States, Canada, France and the Netherlands also have a relatively large share of health spending paid by private insurance (more than 12%).

Health Spending: Total health spending accounted for 15.3% of GDP in the United States in 2005, the highest share in the OECD, (countries are the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Japan and Turkey) and more than six percentage points higher than the average of 9.0% in OECD countries. Following the United States were Switzerland, France and Germany, which allocated respectively 11.6%, 11.1% and 10.7% of their GDP to health.

The United States also ranks far ahead of other OECD countries in terms of total health spending per
capita, with spending of 6,401 USD (adjusted for purchasing power parity), more than twice the OECD
average of 2,759 USD in 2005. Luxembourg comes after with spending of 5,352 USD per capita, followed by Switzerland and Norway with spending of over 4,000 USD per capita.( Differences in health spending across countries may reflect differences in price, volume and quality of medical goods and services consumed.)

Doctors & Nurses: Despite the relatively high level of health expenditure in the United States, there are fewer physicians per capita than in most other OECD countries. In 2005, the United States had 2.4 practising physicians per 1 000 population, below the OECD average of 3.0. There were 7.9 nurses per 1 000 population in the United States in 2002 (latest year available), which is slightly lower than the average of 8.6 across OECD countries.

Life expectancy: In 2004/5, life expectancy in the United States stood at 77.8 years, almost one year below the OECD average of 78.6 years. Japan, Switzerland, Iceland, Australia and Spain were the 5 countries registering the highest life expectancy.

Infant mortality: Infant mortality rates in the United States have fallen greatly over the past few decades, but not as much as in most other OECD countries. It stood at 6.8 deaths per 1 000 live births in 2004, above the OECD average of 5.4.1 Among OECD countries, infant mortality is the lowest in the Nordic countries (Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Norway), in Luxembourg and in Japan, with rates all below 3.2 deaths per 1 000 live births. (Some of the international variation in infant mortality rates is due to variations in registering practices of premature infants (whether they are reported as live births or not). In the United States, Canada and the Nordic countries, very premature babies (with relatively low odds of survival) are registered as live births, which increases mortality rates compared with other countries that do not register them as live births.)

Oh and those concerns about abortion? The lowest abortion rate in the world in 2003 was for Western Europe (12 per 1,000 women aged 15–44), where contraceptive services and use are widespread and safe abortion is easily accessible and legal under broad grounds. The rate was 17 for Northern Europe and 21 for the Northern America region (Canada and the United States).

The countries with the lowest abortion rates, at 7 per 1,000 women aged 15 – 44, are Belgium and the Netherlands. That’s right – the Netherlands, with their legalized pot and prostitution, has an abortion rate that is one-third of ours. (Those statistics are seven years old, but since the overall abortion rate in Western Europe has been relatively static since them, I’ll assume that Belgium & the Netherlands are relatively static as well.)

So – to recap, if we compare ourselves to countries with universal, mostly publicly funded health care, we spend more as a percentage of the GDP and per capita, we have fewer doctors and nurses per capita, a slightly lower life expectancy and higher rates of infant mortality – and a significantly higher abortion rate. About the only health statistic where the Americans win is that we smoke less than practically everybody.

So, you can oppose unversal health care if you want - but it doesn't make health care more expensive, it doesn't mean fewer doctors and nurses, it doesn't decrease life expectancy or infant mortality, and it doesn't increase the abortion rate. You'll have to come up with another reason why it's a bad idea....

(More information on OECD Health Data 2007 is available here .)

Comments

[Carly]

Interesting to know.