I found these statistics in this great diary at Daily Kos. Mitch McConnell compared our health care system with Great Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Below is how we stack up against these 3 countries, all of which have some form of universal health care.
First, let’s look at per capita health care spending in those three countries, and in the United States:
United States: $5,274
Canada: $2,931
United Kingdom: $2,160
New Zealand: $1,857Let’s look at the figures from a slightly different standpoint, total health care spending as a percent of GDP:
United States: 15.4%
Canada: 9.8%
New Zealand: 8.4%
United Kingdom: 8.1%
We’re definitely the most expensive, and we don’t cover everyone.
Here are the number of children, per thousand live births, who die in their first year of life in these same four countries:
United States: 6.3
Canada: 5.08
New Zealand: 4.99
United Kingdom: 4.93…
Here are the years of life expectancy at birth for the total population (in all cases, the average woman lives a little longer than this, and the average man a little less than this):
Canada: 80.18 years
New Zealand: 79.62 years
United Kingdom: 78.95 years
United States: 77.71 years
Why are we still arguing about this? There are so many different models of how to do health care out there – why can’t we pick the best parts of these models?
Source material:
per capita health care spending (we’re #1!)
spending as a % of GDP (we’re #1!)
infant mortality rate (we’re not as good as Cuba, but better than the Faroe Islands #185 of 226 – highest number best)
life expectancy at birth (we’re #36!)