Heartache By the Numbers: American Healthcare Vs Statistics

            Thanks to Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, the issue of healthcare is back in the spotlight, though any serious debate is almost exclusive to the Democratic Party.  Before, we had Barack Obama and his 2008 campaign promise of healthcare reform.  During Obama’s first campaign, his opponents falsely claimed that Obama sought universal healthcare and the debate centered on whether he actually did or not.  This election season, universal healthcare is itself the issue.  The only serious candidate campaigning for it is, as previously mentioned, Bernie Sanders.  By being second place in the Democratic Party, largest party by registered members, Sanders is giving universal healthcare the debate it deserves.

           

            Currently, the US is the only postindustrial nation without guaranteed healthcare.  President Obama’s namesake Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, is the latest healthcare reform to date.  This system is a far cry from single payer healthcare, but even that was a battle.

            Opponents of universal healthcare site inefficiency, lack of innovation and creeping bureaucracy as the leading rebuttals against such a system.  Well, let's look at the numbers.  As healthcare's primary concern is keeping people alive, we will look at life expectancy at birth and infant mortality, but for the sake of cost obsessed opponents of universal healthcare we will also look at cost of per capita. The US and a handful of other nations with universal healthcare, them being UK, Canada and Cuba will be compared.  The World Health Organization and CIA World Factbook numbers will be used.

            First up is the cost per capita of healthcare.  According to WHO, Americans spend $9,146, or 17.1% of GDP on healthcare, UK spends $3,311, or 9.1%, Canadians spend $4,759, or 10.9% of GDP and Cubans spend $1,825, or 8.8% of GDP.  Well, looking at these numbers, one could surmise the US should have much higher life expectancy and infant mortality, as it spends almost as much as the other combined.

Now, let's examine life expectancy at birth.  Again from WHO, the life expectancy at birth for Americans is 76 for males and 81 for females.  The UK’s is 79 for males and 81 for females.  Canadian life expectancy is 80 for men and women at 84.  Cuba has 77 for men and 80 for women.  Strange, as opponents claim that US healthcare is the most efficient, but perhaps that’s just a fluke. 

Perhaps infant mortality per live births will show the superiority of free market based healthcare.  The CIA World Factbook however, tells a different story.  The US has the highest infant mortality rating of all the four nations examined here, Canada’s is 4.65, the UK’s is 4.38 and Cuba’s is 4.63.  Here, in America, the infant mortality rate is 5.87.  That ranks us as #57 in the CIA’s list.

Clearly, just by examining the numbers, our healthcare system is incredibly horrid, a global embarrassment.  We spend more and get less than any other wealthy nation.  The US needs a drastic overhaul of healthcare, far more than the reforms of Obamacare.  Universal healthcare will not solve everything, we still have the issue of obesity, which the Obama administration, championed by Michelle Obama, has tried to curtail by making nutrition labels clearer and more prominent, PSA’s for health food choices and improving school lunches. 

The road to better health is a long and arduous one, but the first and best thing we can do is make healthcare a right for our people.  There is no reason the wealthiest nation in the history of the world should be lagging behind on this.  For ourselves and the next generation of American’s set to inherit this broken system that is killing them younger than it should, we must fix it.