U.S. Per Capita Health Spending 2.5 Times OECD Average

This is hardly new, but data from the OECD illustrates how far out of line spending on healthcare is in the United States.

Total health spending accounted for 16.0% of GDP in the United States in 2007, by far the highest share in the OECD, according to OECD Health Data 2009 (.pdf). Following the United States were France, Switzerland and Germany, which allocated respectively 11.0%, 10.8% and 10.4% of their GDP to health. The OECD average was 8.9% in 2007.

The United States also ranks far ahead of other OECD countries in terms of total health spending per capita, with spending of $7,290, almost two-and-a-half times greater than the OECD average of $2,964 in 2007.

click to enlarge

The high US spending is not accompanied by comparatively better health:

• Life expectancy at birth in the US increased by 8.2 years between 1960 and 2006, which is less than the increase of almost 15 years in Japan, or 9.4 years in Canada. In 2006, life expectancy in the US stood at 78.1 years, almost one year below the OECD average of 79.0 years.
• Infant mortality rates have fallen greatly over the past few decades, but not as much as in most other OECD countries. It stood at 6.7 deaths per 1 000 live births in 2006, above the OECD average of 4.9.
• The obesity rate among US adults (34.3% in 2006) is the highest in OECD countries.
• One positive trend: the proportion of daily smokers among US adults has been cut by more than half over the past 25 years, falling from 33.5% in 1980 to 15.4% in 2007. This is the lowest rate among OECD countries after Sweden.

Comments

[Doc 224899:]

If we shielded healthcare providers and biotech/pharma from predatory lawyers, we'd save about 70% on our national healthcare costs, and it would bring us in line with OECD.

You should be thrilled that we spend 16% of our GDP on THE ONLY SERVICE YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT. If you controlled all the wasteful spending on legal fees, insurance to protect everybody who does or makes something useful from being sued, and defensive medicine, we'd have a terrific system.

Jul 02 11:44 AM

[whidbey:]

Lawyers are not the problem,they are just the maggots that land on dead bodies politicians kill.

The problem is the Congress. Medicare Part D was pure criminality, it must go. The medicare benefits must be cut to a dollar life time limit and an annual limit. We need to realize that everyone dies and it must not be a right to take the everyone's future with you when you died. The last three years of life are just unaffordable.

I really favor giving everyone10K yearly for health benefits and allowing tax deductions for major medical up to 50K, like earned income tax credits. On such terms the citizen can buy major medical insurance from the private providers.

We need new thinking. The Administration's plans are pure lard designed to run private plans into the bankruptcy courts. Lawyers again? No. Politics again. Their plans are for a suicide, not healthy behavior even in aid of health care.

Jul 02 12:07 PM