Saturday, August 15, 2009

The U.K calls "bullshit" on U.S. stereotypes on Health Care

Whenever health care initiatives and innovations are spoken of in the U.S. it always seems to be that someone declares that U.K universal healthcare isn't as good as U.S. The rumours abound that there are waiting lists, less nurses and doctors in U.K (the rumours exist for this about Canada...for some reason there are runours we have extraodinary wait times in hospitals and to see a doctor. We don't...but besides...since when is health care to be compared to "fast food"?)

Well, the U.K. calls bullshit on that...

Health spending as a share of GDP

US 16%
UK 8.4%

Public spending on healthcare (% of total spending on healthcare)

US 45%
UK 82%

Health spending per head

US $7,290
UK $2,992

Practising physicians (per 1,000 people)

US 2.4
UK 2.5

Nurses (per 1,000 people)

US 10.6
UK 10.0

Acute care hospital beds (per 1,000 people)

US 2.7
UK 2.6

Life expectancy:

US 78
UK 80

Infant mortality (per 1,000 live births)

US 6.7
UK 4.8

Source: WHO/OECD Health Data 2009

From The Brutal Truth About Healthcare"

2 comments:

Gardenia said...

Yay for this post! If our current health care is so good why do we rank 40th in a UN study right under Cuba for good care? Our government stifled us getting drugs we could from Canada. Thanks for these figures and bringing this up. I'm not believing the propaganda - not one bit.

Candy Minx said...

I'm glad to hear that Gardenia! You go girl!

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