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Comment by daveoflynn | Hacker News Reader

On the health care front, both the OECD and The Commonwealth Fund give the USA low marks compared to other Western democracies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_system#Cross-countr...

No comment on the 'luxury' claim; that's too subjective for me.

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At the wikipedia page, all they do is compare spending (in $) to life expectancy. This is a terrible comparison, since lots of non-health care factors affect life expectancy. For example, life expectancy within the US is 85 for Asians, 78 for whites and 72 for blacks.

Life expectancy in Japan is 83.

Hypothesis: ethnicity plays a strong role in determining life expectancy. The fact that Japan is 99.4% Asian while the US is only 5% Asian may drag the US down a bit.

Like many things in economics, it's imperfect.

If you compare the US with Canada, which has a similar mixed ethnicity, the dollars to life expectancy is still way better in Canada.

To save some time, I think the typical libertarian argument is to admit the system in the US actually does stink in terms of costs, and argue that if only we had a truly free market, where people could instruct their ambulance drivers to drive around shopping for the best price/performance ratio for their emergency surgery, then things would be better in the US.

This just goes around and around and around, though, doesn't it. I somehow suspect we won't see "health care economics problems solved on niche web site" as tomorrow's headlines.

I love to talk about this stuff with people in person, but the bandwidth of a web site is just too low - people write books on these subjects, for pete's sake.

If you compare the US with Canada, which has a similar mixed ethnicity,...

False. Canada has more long lived Asians and far fewer short lived Blacks (and "some other race") than the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Canada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...

In any case, I'm not asserting that ethnicity is the only factor affecting life expectancy. My claim is that many factors affect life expectancy and health care is way down the list in terms of magnitude (once you reach first world levels). Thus, using life expectancy as a proxy for health care is simply a terrible idea.

Ok, but the real difference is in spending. People in the US live to 78, Canadians to 81, according to that site, which isn't a huge difference. The difference in spending, however, is, which is why the US is such an outlier on that chart.

... and around ...

I was questioning the claim of "more luxury, more free time, and better health-care".

Much like free time, claims about costs are easily googleable.

I think that just a disagreement over how to interpret "best" - for an individual who can afford it the "best" health care is likely to be in the US. However, I suspect Europeans think of it as "pretty good health care for everyone" rather than "the absolutely the most effective health care for some".

I'm in the UK so I rather like knowing that everyone has access to pretty decent healthcare which is free at the point of delivery. If I want fancier stuff or a slightly nicer room or more quickly than what the NHS can provide I can always go private. However, I've never done that and I don't know anyone who has for anything major.

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