Hacker News Reader

Comment by coryaf | Hacker News Reader

This is a misleading clickbaity headline. Those 6 countries added up equal about the population of the US, so it's not like we're spending 6 times other countries on a per capita basis. We spend more and get less than other countries, but you don't need to mislead people to get that point across.

View on HN

If they have the same combined population, then it’s not misleading. There are no other first world countries with 300 million people, so it’s pretty obvious that the comparison is with the combined 6 countries.

Yes it is - they could have done it on a per capita basis but they didn't. Also, if you read the headline, it's very easy to think we spend 6 times per capita than comparable countries, which would be wrong

This does not make sense. If spending is much higher for a similar number of people, then spending per capita will be higher by the same factor. Normalising per block of 300M people or per person is exactly the same, that’s not misleading at all.

The headline says exactly what it seems to say. It does not imply any normalisation per capita.

Perhaps you could tell me what information, other than how big the US is, is conveyed by the headline when it says "than six countries... combined".

>Those 6 countries added up equal about the population of the US,

Yes, that's exactly the point: to compare the US with a similarly sized block of nations.

And from that we can conclude that this block of nations can service universal healthcare to 330 million people without additional private healthcare insurance.

So for less TAX money than the US they get universal healthcare for the same amount of people, while US taxpayers pay more but still have to buy insurance on top of what the government spends on healthcare.

Sure, the article makes that point, and it's reasonably well made (although not the case that there isn't any private insurance in those countries at all). My point was that the article's title is misleading and clickbaity and does not convey the point that the article makes well

> This means the U.S. government spent more on health care last year than the governments of Germany, the U.K., Italy, Spain, Austria, and France combined spent to provide universal health care coverage to the whole of their population (335 million in total), which is comparable in size to the U.S. population of 331 million.

I’m not sure how the headline is misleading in any way.

Reality: the US is spending 1.5 times what comparable countries are spending on healthcare

This headline: the US is spending 6 times what comparable countries are spending on healthcare

Yes - it's very misleading

That is not what the headline says.

That is how it is reasonable to interpret the headline, given no other information

I don’t know how to discuss this because I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.

It seems like a totally straightforward headline to me. There’s no mention of per-capita, no mention of some sort of multiplier.

It actually seems like quite a generous headline to me, given that it is talking about just the US government (when most of our healthcare system is privately paid).

Perhaps you could tell me what information, other than how big the US is, is conveyed by the headline when it says "than six countries... combined".

I don’t disagree that the comparison could be better, but that’s a different problem from a misleading headline.

First of all, that's not what the headlines says.

Second of all, reality isn't that the US spends 1.5 times the money. The reality is that the US government spends 1.5 times the amount that these other governments spend.

But somehow in the US people still need to buy private insurance. Even though all people in the other countries get universal healthcare for less public money than the US already spends on healthcare.

It's meant to illustrate how cost inefficient the healthcare systems in the US is.

That is how it is reasonable to interpret the headline, given no other information

The US federal public spending being cited here is for Medicare and Medicaid only. They are nowhere close to providing healthcare for the entire population.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com