Healthcare

GLOBAL INVESTOR 2.12 — 07
Switzerland
82 years
7,810 USD
Russian Federation
68 years
525 USD
South Africa
52 years
650 USD
Burkina Faso
50 years
40 USD
United Kingdom
80 years
3,502 USD
Does more money mean better health?
Spending on healthcare (red) is loosely correlated to life expectancy
(blue). Rich countries tend to have high life expectancies. Life is
shorter in poor countries like Burkina Faso, where many die of malaria,
and in South Africa, where 17.8% of people are infected with
HIV. But many factors come into play. The question is not simply
how much money is spent on healthcare per capita. People live to
similar ages in Japan, the USA, Cuba, Switzerland and the UK. But
the UK spends 14 times more per capita than Cuba. Healthcare
spending as a percentage of GDP also does not explain a country’s
success. Spending is almost equal in South Africa (8.9%) and the
UK (9.6%), but the outcomes for health and life expectancy are
(91.5%) might appear to be the secret formula for a low-cost long
life. Yet the state also pays the lion’s share in the British system
(83.9%), which is nearly six times more expensive. Costs are also
high in the US system, where public spending amounts to 53.1%
of healthcare expenditures. Source: World Bank