Comments on: How Countries Spend Their Money

By: Loki

Loki — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:38:28 +0000

You guys also ignore the free rider problem. Other countries free ride on U.S. medical innovation and military might, allowing them to spend less while we spend more. So while Canadian and European healthcare may be “cheaper”, it’s because they aren’t paying for innovation, we are.

By: Comparing National Spending on Health, Education, and the Military » Sociological Images

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:18:26 +0000

[...] Visual Economics posted a (mildly) interactive page comparing what percentage of their budget different nations spend on health, education, and their military. The three screenshots below are for health: [...]

By: kiran

kiran — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:34:18 +0000

I think this information is nearly correct. I know the military and health expenses For India and Pakistan and figure is exactly which is providing here.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:05:02 +0000

If you want free healthcare, move to Canada.

I prefer my doctor/patient relationship and would like to keep the government out of my business.

Yes, there are things that could help reform the system. There are regulations that need to be made. But, if you start putting caps on how much pharmaceutical companies can charge and how much doctors can bill for services, who will invest in finding cures or innovations, and who will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their life to go through medical school?

This seems like the same type of problem the U.S. faced with oil under the Carter Administration. We’re too focused on the demand side (patients) and not even considering the supply side (doctors and researchers).

As we’re talking about education and healthcare, has it occurred to anyone that only 5% of the bachelors degree’s handed out in the U.S. are in a science field? Does that sound like a problem to anyone? Is it not true that if we had more doctors, the price to go see a doctor would go down? This is an economics website. I would hope you would be able to complete the logic.

By: Kingg

Kingg — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:28:09 +0000

Dear Boortz,
Read your comment; look at the health expenditure as a comparison to the country’s GDP; you will find that the USA spends about 19% of GDP for no better health outcomes than the UK, Canada or Australia who spend about 8% GDP on health. That’s your problem the US is not getting the best bang for its bucks.

By: geez

geez — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:09:22 +0000

WOW: What is wrong with you? Both numbers are percentages! Maybe the US should have spent a bit more education $ on you!

By: vol

vol — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:35:56 +0000

It’s strange that france spends less money in health than usa and everyone has free helth coverage in france and notin the usa.

By: Introspective

Introspective — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:46:20 +0000

Governments spend or waste, it only depend how you look at it. there is a great difference between making money and spending money.

By: Tom M

Tom M — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:48:11 +0000

Few points:

The argument, “The US spends so much on health care and its still expensive for private citizens, which is why we need health care reform” is silly. If health care is already such a large percentage of the US budget, what do you think will happen to that number once every citizen is brought under the government umbrella? You think the government is going to miraculously get really good at controlling costs?

@Tommy – In the case of the US, the difference consists largely of debt payments. I am not familiar enough with the UAE to budget to speak to their budget.

By: Norwegian

Norwegian — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:11:14 +0000

The health-care stats for Norway is wrong. We spend roughly 1/3 of our national budget on healthcare. Because of the red-green government’s policies of not using the capacities from private actors, we now use twice as much as we did four years ago, under the center-right government.