When we think about the current situation in Washington, it’s hard to believe that government can ever provide efficiently for the needs of the majority of our citizens. Yet, obviously, it doesn’t have to be this way. Other countries seem to manage. For example, a July 2017 study by the Commonwealth Fund compared the United States health care system to ten other high-income countries.
This chart plots health care spending (left to right) in relation to health care performance (top to bottom), an index which combines five dimensions—care process, access, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes. As you can see, we spend far more on health care that the other countries, yet we have poorer health outcomes. While life expectancy in the U. S. had been improving for several decades, it is now declining in some populations, in part due to the opioid crisis.
As an illustration of how things could be different, I recommend taking six minutes to watch this video by Joshua Holland, with animation by Rob Pybus, comparing life in Denmark, the second happiest country in the world, to life in the United States, the 15th happiest.
You can find the text of the video here. If you’d like to compare economic and social outcomes in the U. S. and Denmark more closely, check out the 17 charts in this article.
You may have noticed that this post has the same theme as Michael Moore’s 2015 documentary film, Where to Invade Next. For a longer (and funnier) look at what we can learn from the rest of the world, I highly recommend it.
You may also be interested in reading: