You might want to take a look this table from the World Bank on personal out-of-pocket expenditures on healthcare as a percentage of private expenditure on healthcare. It’s something to keep in mind the next time somebody touts somebody else’s healthcare system. One of the many ways in which our system is different.
IMO there are several different ways of looking at this table. One way would be that we, personally, are paying too little for healthcare. Another would be that public expenditure is a lot higher elsewhere. That table is here by the way.
Government expenditure mostly represents money stolen from young, single, childfree males and used to support health care of breeding females and of old folks.
Looked for and couldnt find their methodology. Kind of conflicts with the Commonwealth numbers.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Charts/Chartbook/Multinational-Comparisons-of-Health-Systems-Data-2010/O/Out-of-Pocket-Health-Spending-2008.aspx
Steve
@steve, no conflict. Dave’s table is measured as a percentage, and yours are measured in dollars. They could be reporting the same underlying data, if U.S. healthcare is more expensive than in other countries.