Quote:
Originally Posted by adios
I've never understood the argument that the US spends too much on healthcare as evidenced by the percentage of GDP devoted to healthcare costs. First and foremost of all as societies advance of course they are going to devote more of their resources to health care IE improved outcomes for health care. Second of all where is the threshold at for spending too much? Personally I don't thing comparisons to other countries strictly on the basis of GDP says a whole lot. The quality of care issue has been discussed ad infinitum in the the threads on this forum.
WRT. the bolded, I agree, and that's included in the first graph I posted. That one didn't sort spending by % of GDP, but rather as expected exptenditure based on national wealth. It's from a McKinsey study which acknowledges that a country will spend more money on health care as it's per capita income increases. What it's pointing out is that the US expenditures are a vast departure from the regression curve, and it's that departure which is what they're considering excess spending.
The problem is that despite all that additional spending the outcomes are generally not improved.
I'm not sure what the optimal level of spending is, but I do tend to agree that devoting far more of your resources to a problem while achieving similar results as your peers who devote much less to that problem is generally not ideal.
My second post was more of an "interpret what you will" post, but it should be obvious that health care demand is generally inelastic regardless of the underlying economic conditions, and that the market does't really work efficiently when it comes to HC.