The Divergence of U.S. Healthcare
As you can see, Americans are spending more money – but they are not receiving results using the most basic metric of life expectancy. The divergence starts just before 1980, and it widens all the way to 2014.
It's worth noting that the 2015 statistics are not plotted on this chart. However, given that healthcare spend was 17.5% of GDP in 2015, the divergence is likely to continue to widen. U.S. spending is now closing in on $10,000 per person.
Perhaps the most concerning revelation from this data?
Not only is U.S. healthcare spending wildly inefficient, but it's also relatively ineffective. It would be one thing to spend more money and get the same results, but according to the above data that is not true. In fact, Americans on average will have shorter lives people in other high income countries.
Life expectancy in the U.S. has nearly flatlined, and it hasn't yet crossed the 80 year threshold. Meanwhile, Chileans, Greeks, and Israelis are all outliving their American counterparts for a fraction of the associated costs.
(http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/us-healthcare-system.jpg)
http://www.visualcapitalist.com/u-s-healthcare-system-global-outlier-not-good-way/
It would be interesting to plot the rise in obesity on this same graph over the years. I suspect it correlates positively with healthcare cost (and McDonald's stock price) and negatively with life expectancy in a dramatic fashion. It would also be nice to be able to see the percentage of U.S. healthcare expenditure that is funneled through private insurance companies. I think the whole system went to hell when private insurance companies started to contract with providers to insure (pun intended) that medical expenses were being funneled through them and therefore people could no longer seek adequate medical coverage without having some sort of plan. Oh yeah, and it's the baby boomers fault. Haha