this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Data Is Beautiful

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[–] [email protected] 184 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The market has solved it.

You just don't realize what the market has solved for. It didn't solve the problem of expensive healthcare, it solved the problem of how to maximize profits for the wealthy.

That's what people don't understand about "the market". What you think it's doing isn't what it's actually doing.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago

Yup, the free market and health care are not compatible because the free market works on principles of supply and demand. But when you have a limited resource that people will literally pay anything for (their health) - well you can see where the problem is.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (10 children)

If the free market had any real competitors, the problem would genuinely solve itself in favor of the consumer. We see this with any new tech where a bunch of new firms try to win customers by any means necessary in those first few years.

The problem as always is: where are the competitors after X years, and are these "competitors" actually competing anymore?

The solution as always is: regulate. Ensure competition. Ensure cartels aren't price fixing. But no one wants to hear that

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The streaming market has tons of competition. So then why are prices endlessly rising and content being removed and the value being made worse with ads?

The video game market also has tons of companies in it, and yet most of them are making the experience worse with ads and service-based games.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

I N N O V A T I O N Doctors in the US spend about 25% of their time dealing with insurance companies

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (3 children)

In Germany the adminstrative effort including documentation is at 50%.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's pretty disconcerting that we're the second worst after the US.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

Sure. But the graphic is very much cherry picked. There is plenty of space between the US and Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

What surprises me is the high rank of Australia!

  • Infrastructure in Australia is unfavorable… like the US (thin emc network vs. helicopters in Germany that are super common, Germany is a dense country, everywhere hospitals… Australia a desert with some coast. Like US.)
  • Australians are basically US americans of the south (think food: originally british, cannot be healthy, no good car manufacturers, afraid of foreigners…)
  • Everything is trying to kill you in Australia!

What the heck are they doing?

But maybe the Germans can learn from the Australians something. Germany‘s System is such a inefficient mess… just the administrative effort to maintain dozens of public health care insurances… crazy!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I don't understand the points of this post.

Australia is very urbanised with the vast majority of the country clinging to the coastal rim. The interior of the country is vastly unpopulated.

Australia has a much better health outcomes than the US. Our fast food culture, although not great, cannot be compared to Americans.

The 'everything can kill you' thing is a meme. Yes, we have tons of venomous creatures but as we mostly live in the cities the rare deaths cause headlines and are not common place. Plus we don't experience mass shootings every week, let alone single gun deaths.

The single biggest benefit for Australian life expectancy is socialised medicine. It's not perfect, and insurance is encouraged, but a poor person in need of major medical intervention has almost identical access to health care as a fully insured person, and mostly with no financial outlay. In fact, an insured person may lie side-by-side in a hospital bed next to an uninsured person getting the same treatment.

Medical insurance is not tied to employment.

All this is under threat. Conservatives are attacking our health system and underfunding it. It is only a matter of time before we start tracking downwards like the US. The secret to a longer life expectancy is government regulation and social responsibility, a healthy personal lifestyle and not feeding the corporate medical parasites that sit between the patient and the required healthcare.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

To add to @[email protected] 's points, Australia isn't afraid of foreigners, it has very high migration. You might be confused because of the government's reprehensible treatment of asylum seekers. Yes it was colonised by England, but internally, diversity is the most celebrated aspect of Australia.

Australia has been dubbed 'the lucky country' because despite a lack of smarts (manufacturing and other value added economic activity), we've always been able to dig things out of the ground and sell it (coal, wood, gas, food, gold...). Though Australia never developed a serious manufacturing sector, it has pivoted to a service economy instead, with that sector's highest export being higher education.

The lessons to learn from Australia is be rich, be on the other side of the world away from the world wars, and have high welfare spending (plenty of room for improvement though).

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Is this a good comparison? Feels like we're missing all of the US administration, insurance is just a part of it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Barely, but doctors here in Germany are always complaining about difficulties they have with insurances. Especially the dozens of different public insurances. System here is an unconsolidated mess. Apart from having optional private insurance.

Like my doctor working on treatment and not being buried with administrative tasks.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 50 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The best part is that it's only State spendings, people in the USA also pay for private insurance individually!

[–] [email protected] 49 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Americans essentially pay for our insurance 4 times.

we pay more tax dollars per patient than ay other country

We pay hundreds per person per month in insurance premiums

We pay all healthcare expenses until we hit our annual deductible

We they pay a co-pay percentage after all treatment beyond the deductible.

Everyone knows it's a broken system, but people are adamant that anything else would be communism or would make you lose an election.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

The people worried about "losing an election" are paid by the people who profit from the broken system. The communism fear is a strawman that liberals use to excuse their worthless party.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Wait the life expectancy in the US is that low?!

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (6 children)

..how did the line come about? How did they determine what the life expectancy would have been with less expenditure per capita?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My guess is that this was a gif at some point and the line is historical data

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Definitely, you can see some lines in the top left zigzagging back left, which would not be possible if each was a function of the x-axis. In fact, both axes are a function of the hidden z-axis, which is time and comes in discrete yearly steps, the latest of which (2021) is highlighted.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

At least one of those lines goes back on itself at some point, so my assumption is that it's tracking where each country has been over time.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Ooh good catch. That makes sense. Not sure I would call this beautiful, especially without any way to tell how much time has passed, but fair enough

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think the line might be historical data?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But.. from when? Surely expenditure hasn't gone up linearly with time

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah something is weird about this graph.

Health expense in what timeframe? Monthly, yearly?

If i had to guess, i would say this graph just shows the average yearly health expense of people that died at age X

So people that spend more money on their health, live longer. If thats the whole message this is the most boring graph ever.

If the US line is true, it shows that people there get much less value out of the money they spend on their health.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

My guess is that the line tracks what the life expectancy was when the expenditure per capita was that much? Might have to dig into their source to get more details.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, but think of all that value generated for shareholders in America: What's a few million dead people compared to profit?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

That, and half of the system is designed to discard people that are no long useful for the machine, unless of course they're wealthy or have a wealthy benefactor.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

Abolish private health insurance corporations. The middlemen are bleeding us fuckin dry.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

High life expentancy is communism tho

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

This makes complete sense as getting you to pay more for less is what private businesses are all about.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think it's clear from the graph that USA is doing it right and the rest of the world needs to smarten up!

/s

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

We can do better. There’s still empty pixels on the right to fill.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would really like to know how this graph was generated, because some expenditure per capita values have three different corresponding life expectancy values. Just look at Spain for example.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

One could poke around on those sources: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/1832

https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm

My understanding is that the largest part of expenditures on health is generally at end of life, at least in developed countries, rather than spending a smaller amount on disease prevention earlier in life, which would be expected to have a larger effect on morbidity and mortality.

EEAGLI looks to be some sort of marketing/ PR firm. shrug

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Yes this is a huge problem. Keeping people healthy instead of mitigating the obvious consequences of their unhealthy life

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

in case you've not gotten the memo, the entire world has been telling you for more than fifty years that under your shitty model you pay more for worse results.

It doesn't take a genius to see how retarded the way you're doing things is.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Retarded? You obviously don't understand that it is working perfectly and exactly as intended. Only, it is not a system to maintain the health of the average citizen, it is instead a system to siphon as much wealth from the regular people as possible towards the few corporate entities who managed to buy themselves the monopoly to exploit the poorer castes and drain any poor fuck who needs medical assistance dry for all they're worth.

The average American is prey, but there are enough reserves of these human resources to simply not care that it's either bankruptcy or death in the average case of a medical emergency.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cool, can the stupid meme "security is why the US has no free healthcare" finally die?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Only if you keep reminding people that Medicare for All would be cheaper than our current system.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Thanks USA, for fucking up so hard the rest of us can slack off on improvement because you're pulling the average so far out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The good news is that if you live in America, living part 80 is a terrible experience that nobody would want to do anyways.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Well, now I’d like to learn what the differences between the US and the Australian Healthcare System are!

Why is Australia so damn high up?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare. And you have optional additional private insurance. Communism I guess. Surely wouldn’t workout for the US…

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare.

To follow from your comment , because Australia has a publicly funded health system, the government actively works to reduce preventable diseases because it reduces the load on the system.

So they have had:

A sunscreen campaign and skin cancer check initiatives since the '80s.

Anti-smoking campaigns (and high tobacco taxes) where resources are available to help quit.

Every citizen gets a free bowel cancer test mailed to them when they turn 50 to help find and treat cancer earlier.

Road safety laws are tight and helmet / seatbelt regulations are strict as it reduces hospital loads.

Vaccinations for a multitude of easily preventable diseases are given for free in childhood, particularly now for the virus that causes cervical cancer.

Those and a myriad of other public health initiatives all help Australians to live longer.

Coupled with the fact that the cost for the whole population is borne by an income tax of approximately 2% , it means that if you are poor or unemployed, you still have access to health services. That also means that small health issues among low income earners don't snowball until they are life threatening.

It has the knock on effect that people don't end up trapped in a job because it offers "good benefits and a low deductible" and concerns about pre existing conditions interfering with insurance and etc when changing jobs is generally moot.

Then throw in mandatory government regulated retirement funds that require all employers to put in 12+ percent of an employee's gross earnings into an employee's fund of their choosing for their retirement. That coupled with public health generally means the whole US style worker=slave arrangement can't exist.

Which means the US will get nothing like this as all that screams of nanny state overlords and death panels and moar taxes killing freedom and so on and so forth. Sorry guys.

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