[OC] Does High Healthcare Spending Guarantee Longevity? Lessons from Blue Zone Countries

Posted by Dense_Currency_14

27 comments

  2. While looking at countries with Blue Zone regions (regions in the world where people have exceptionally long lives) we see that only Japan and Italy have a good balance between healthcare spending and life expectancy. Japan has a healthcare spending of $5,250.60 per capita, and a life expectancy of 84.1 years. While, Italy has a lower healthcare spending at $4,290.69 per capita and maintains a high life expectancy of 82.8 years. Greece and the United States on the other hand have a life expectancy lower than the OECD average 80.8, and 76.4 years respectively.

    Unlike many other developed countries, there is no national health service in the United States, instead most physicians have some form of a private practice. [[1]](#_ftn1) This may lead to higher cost as the state can not control prices compared to other countries with different systems. On the other hand, with the higher per capita cost of health care the US tends to receive the latest medical and pharmaceutical treatments before other countries.

    The discrepancy in health care spending and life expectancy in the US ($12,555.26 for 76.4 years) suggests that spending alone may not increase life expectancy. Could the US improve life expectancy by focussing their efforts on minimizing other external factors such as but not limited to gun violence, road safety, and drug misuse. Potentially, addressing these issues may be key to improving life expectancy in the US.

    Canada spends $6,319.04 per capita for 81.6 years which is a higher life expectancy than the OECD average of 80.6 years. Meaning that the average Canadian has a great life expectancy compared to the average OECD country. Canada faces its own unique issues when dealing with healthcare. Each province has a large difference in urban/rural areas, and each province has their own health governing body that cover a variety of healthcare related programs including province drug coverage plans (Trillium Program in Ontario, RAMQ in Quebec, etc.) This leads to differences in equal services not only between provinces, but also across population groups within a province. Potentially, having more focus on rural communities could lead to the overall life expectancy of Canadians increasing.

    [[1]](#_ftnref1) Scarborough, H. and Todd, . John Walford (2024, October 31). medicine. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/medicine

  4. Wow maybe every country should copy what Japan does! Also where is Costa rica? I’m pretty sure they’re an OECD country and they have a blue zone

  5. Healthcare spending is interesting in that, among countries with similar standards of living, higher healthcare spending could sometimes be indicative of a less healthy population. I think the correlation might go the other way in the US; higher spending beyond a certain point probably means your population is either older or has some kind of systemic health problem, in America’s case, obesity. Basically, I’m wondering, comparing say the US and Canada, how much of the cost difference is because of our inefficient medical system, how much is because 43% of our country is obese compared to 27% in Canada, and how much is the US having naturally higher prices (Baumol’s cost disease)?

  6. I’m missing temperature/weather (which maybe influences the life expectancy) and how much the money is spent percentage wise (in Greece 3000$ are probably much more than 6000$ in Finland).

  8. Theres a lot of empty space and low contrast gray text. I had to zoom in and scroll a lot to see the data and compare it to its axes.

  10. I wonder what causes the US to be an outlier? Hmmmmmmmmmm

  11. It’s less about the amount, and more how the money is used (e.g. to make healthcare universally accessible, vs only for those that have the money).

  12. The point is made, but the whole botton half of the chart is empty. Could rescale to show differences.

  13. I was going to complain about not including the US…but then I scrolled over more

  14. Many Americans are obese, that’s the main cause for low life expectancy. More money doesn’t help if you don’t take care of your body.

  16. Would be very, very interesting to see this with each country showing the range of life expectancy for richest to poorest citizens

    As a vertical line per country

    My guess is that the US would be one of the countries to show a wider spread of low to high – with a big number of low income citizens affected by a lack of health care access (and higher obesity rates … etc) vs somewhere like Japan

  17. Wish we could compare factor in things like…

    1. Cost each place pays in taxes
    2. Cost someone spends on insurance
    3. Cost of a normal checkup (before/after insurance)
    4. Cost of a preventative screening (before/after insurance)
    4. Cost of a minor surgery (like ear tubes or hernia)
    5. Cost of a major surgery (like internal rupture of a hernia because the cost of the minor surgery was more than one makes in a month… after insurance.
    6. Cost of long term treatment like rehabilitation or cancer treatment…

    All before and after insurance.

    This is like that Kennedy video where he posing with cheezeitz. Talks about the spending… nothing about the costs.

  18. Is there some metric that also attempts to quantify “quality of health?” Life expectancy isn’t particularly useful if someone spends the last ten years of their life abjectly miserable. I think Peter Attia refers to this as someone’s “healthspan.”

    To be clear, my suspicion is the United States would fare even worse in this comparison, but I’d prefer to see that born out in the data.

  19. This is ugly/manipulative. Imagine the direction of the trend line that was omitted, vs the conclusion being pushed by highlighting selective data points and GREYING OUT others. Yes something is wrong with the US system. But the data SHOULD reinforce that generally, expenditure per capital and life expectancy are correlated.

    ETA: I realize you want to focus on Blue Zone companies. But something feels off about pairing the question “does high healthcare spending guarantee longevity” with the selected countries skews the original chart. I’m sure someone else can express this better than I am.

  20. You see, we can’t have medicare for all because it would be too expensive

  21. I really do wonder when or rather if the US ever changes their fucked medical system. Even they think its expensive and what they are getting is also subpar (unless rich). So whats the point, besides not wanting to pay for others?

  22. I’m very surprised that Australia has a such life expectancy, considering everything is trying to kill you there

  23. A lot of US healthcare costs subsidize the huge amount of medical R&D that lead to major breakthroughs that we all benefit from today. Thank you US for footing the bill so the rest of in the world don’t have to

  24. This is really just a nice graph showing that medicine has solved a lot of the easily solvable heath concerns that increase mortality and so most countries are leveled off at about the same life expectancy. What differs is likely how much each nation is spending on difficult healthcare issues like cancer where a lot of money is going towards very little gains. The US spends a lot more on cancer care than other countries per capita and tends to have better 5 year survival rates than other countries for that cost but those gains are small and so rarely play out in overall life expectancy.

  26. I do find interesting how all these European drug companies have no problem charging Americans exuberant prices for their drugs.

    It’d be interesting to see what happens companies like AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Bayer etc profit line if Americans were charged what Europeans are charged for their drugs.

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