From the archives (but still relevant): Health Briefing

The key takeaway from the health briefing about my upcoming school-sponsored Asian adventure.

Why Do Salads Cost So Much?

Great chart from Good Medicine (via the Atlantic) comparing the cost of a Big Mac to a salad. Why does rabbit food cost more than Angus Prime?

Subsidies

If you ever wonder why stuff we don't like happens so much, sometimes the answer is that we're paying people to do the wrong thing.

Whether it's pollution, obesity or sprawl, there are ill-conceived incentives and subsidies that drive much of the activity we want to prevent.

Unhealthy Health Stats

Wow. We can't get much right around here, can we?

This graphic courtesy of National Geographic Magazine depicts health care spending per person in various countries. Ironically, yet somehow not surprisingly, despite paying exorbitantly more for health care on an individual basis, Americans have a shorter life expectancy than citizens of most other developed nations and several developing ones according to the article . Health experts interviewed for the article argue that the high cost to shorter life expectancy relationship is the result of our country's fee-for-service system, which results in unneeded treatment that "doesn't reliably improve a patients health." Hhhhmmm. The old more-is-not-necessarily-better argument. Gets 'em every time.

A cheat-sheet for those of you too lazy to click on the graphic to enlarge:

The left-hand vertical axis depicts health care cost per person per year.
The right-hand vertical axis depicts life expectancy.
The orange lines represent those countries without universal health care coverage.
The wayward orange line that begins below the average life expectancy point of the countries polled and shoots to the top and almost off of the graphic is 'Merica.