Alternate View: Health Care Cost, Life Expectancy

From 538:

(Illustration: Andrew Gelman, fivethirtyeight.com, "Healthcare Spending and Life Expectancy")

Andrew Gelman at fivethirtyeight.com says:

A somewhat misleading (in my opinion) presentation of these numbers has been floating around on the web recently, and so I wanted to post this cleaner graph. (The area of the circle for each country is proportional to the number of doctor visits per person; I don't know that this information is so crucial but I included it, as it was on the original graph that I've modified.)

I don't agree that the original image is "misleading", but I do agree that this one is cleaner and shows the relationships nicely. See that circle way out on the right, in the expensive section? That's the US. I tend to think that swapping the axes on this graph would make the point better, though.

I also note that there's a clear positive correlation (if you exclude the US) between health care spending per capita and life expectancy. Might be worth pulling the numbers off one of the images and re-plotting it....

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Health Care: Cost, Life Expectancy, and Usage

National Geographic presents a fantastic infographic showing the relationship between cost of health care (on a per capita basis), the rate of usage, and life expectancy.

It's a great graphic.

There is little clear relationship between cost, usage, and life expectancy. But there is one fantastically spectacular flyer: the United States.

In return for paying nearly $3000 more per capita than their nearest competitor (Switzerland, if you're counting out there), the US gets about 3.75 fewer years of life expectancy while visiting the doctor about the same number of times (less than 4) per year.

Compared to your neighbour to the North (and my present country of residence), Canada, you in the US are paying about $3400 more per capita while getting about 2.5 fewer years of life and fewer doctor visits (0-3 compared with 4-7).

Compared to a real success story like Japan, the US pays about $4700 more per capita, gets 4.5 fewer years of life, and 0-3 doctor visits instead of 12 or more.

Given that there is only one other country on the graphic without national health care of some kind (Mexico), and that Mexico has a very different relationship between cost, usage, and life expectancy, this infographic does not specifically indict the lack of national health care as the cause of the wild difference between US costs and the rest of the world. It does, however, demonstrate that national health care can and does provide effective health care (better care than the US gets) for less cost. Much less cost.

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Interesting Display and Interactive Exit Poll Data- How they voted.

This is one of the best ways I have seen the voter exit poll data displayed. Shows where we are strong going forward, where we need to shore up support. I would love to see this done for projective polling data for McCain vs. Obama as we go into the general.

Interesting stuff. Technology is a grand thing.
h/t to my friend David Welton who pointed this NYTIMES piece out to me.

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