A thin red line

Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic blogs posted an interesting chart on his blog a little over a week ago. It tells a pretty startling tale about the American health care system. Thanks to Funkaoshi for the link.

What this chart does is compare the health care spending per person in a range of developed countries with their average life expectancies at birth. The blue lines represent countries with universal health care coverage provided by public and private insurers, and the red lines – all two of them – represent countries without it. The thinner the line, the lower the average number of doctor visits per year.

Now, you see that thin red line that starts much, much higher than the rest on the “health care spending per person” side and lands below the average on the “average life expectancy” side? That’s America.

“If anyone can look at this and not see a simply insane way to distribute health care,” Sullivan says, “a system so inefficient no socialist country could ever replicate it, then they have stronger rationalization skills than I possess.”

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