In any financial decision that is taken, whether at a personal, business, or governmental level, the most important and basic question that is asked is what the return on investment is. The availability of good healthcare is one of the most important things in life that one expects. It is assumed that one would receive the best healthcare system in the world’s largest economy. That assumption may not be true, as I found out.
“expected life span of someone born in the U.S. is now 76.4 years — the shortest it has been in nearly two decades – npr.org (Dec 22)”. This was the headline that prompted me to ask a question myself, am I getting the best return on the thousands of dollars that I spend on healthcare every year?
Americans spend the highest on healthcare per capita and on an overall value. A value of $10,921 (2019) per capita yet ranking 48th (2019) in terms of life expectancy. Far below many countries such as UAE, Japan, Germany, the UK, and many others. That spends half to one-fifth of what the US spends and still has a better life expectancy. The unfortunate aspect of this is that life expectancy has since significantly decreased even with a historic increase in spending. There is a factor of the pandemic but given the performance before the pandemic and during it, the ranking does not seem to be improving when we get the latest data.
Why the life expectancy data is the ultimate metric of healthcare because it consolidates all the factors of disease, crime, and economics as ultimately it shows the average expected years that a person in a country would live. It is also one of the key metrics of the HDI.
One may question that maybe the life that Americans lead even though short, is a healthy one. For that, I looked at the top causes of death in the US. Cancer and Diabetes were major causes. The US has the highest, No. 1 (ranked worst to best), Cancer prevalence at 5.4% (2017) in the world. For Diabetics, the US ranks 147th (ranked best to worst), with 10.7% (2021) of its population diabetic. Another important metric is the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), with an IMR of 5.5 the US is ranked 53rd (ranked best to worst) in the world.
With the ever-increasing cost of healthcare and insurance, these metrics do not build confidence in the ability of the current system to deliver. There have been endless discussions about healthcare in this country, but sometimes focusing on the micro can lead to ignoring the macro. I wanted to look at the macro picture, and this data tells me that there is a significant need for structural change in healthcare. This is something that I will take into account when voting the next time.
