Introduction
It is interesting to look at healthcare spending and see how this affects life expectancy and whether any particular system of healthcare has advantages over any other.
Healthcare Costs
"Health care costs are an issue both for the government and for our larger economy." Sylvia Mathews Burwell
Overall Health Spending by Year as a Percentage of GDP
The graph below shows health care costs over time as a percentage of GDP for several advanced countries.
Healthcare cost 1970-2016
This is a proportion of GDP, so ignores exchange rates etc. The UK system is one of the cheapest in the ‘rich’ world. Switzerland and Germany, which normally rank above it, spend considerably more…. 12–13%, not the 9.5% of the UK. The system is fundamentally sound. There are places for improvement.
"I entered the health care debate in response to a statement in the United States press in summer 2009 which claimed the National Health Service in Great Britain would have killed me off, were I a British citizen. I felt compelled to make a statement to explain the error." Stephen Hawking
The US ‘system’, in so much as it exists at all, is crippling expensive, and is pushing 20% of GDP for 2016. It also fails to deliver better health.
Life Expectancy versus Health Expenditure
The next graph shows life expectancy versus annual health expenditure per person in US$.
Life expectancy vs health expenditure 1970-2014
The USA spends far more than the rest of the world, and gets less for it. The USA is also one of the few free market healthcare systems in the analysis. It is almost as if healthcare is not a good place for a free market.
The free market healthcare system is a for profit system. They see every patient who arrives as a source of revenue to be maximized. They do not wish to cure the patient. They wish to extend the time the patient is in care so that treatment, tests and revenue can be maximized.
In the public health care system it is a limited resource system. For every new patient arriving they wish to cure the patient in the minimum time, with the minimum use of resources so that she/he does not come back.
This is reflected in annual spending per person very high in the USA and less than half that in the UK and the USA with a low life expectancy of 79.46 year and the UK with 81.45 years (2024 figures worldometers.info). The USA is just behind Albania and just ahead of Poland in life expectancy at country position 48 in the world. The extra spending in the USA translates to lower life expectancy. The USA system is broken and the American people are suffering for it. If the USA was to implement a public healthcare system similar to the UK they could halve healthcare costs and increase life expectancy and quality of life for many Americans.
Unfortunately the US healthcare providers make enough money to lobby government to not change the system that is making them all this money, so chances of change are slim. The whole thing is morally corrupt and costing thousands of American lives every year.
The tobacco industry in the USA for many years managed to escape any penalties and reform but was eventually brought to justice. One can hope that at some point the same will happen with the healthcare system as it is costing many more lives every year than tobacco ever did and wasting much more money.
Last Update
This last graph shows information from 2022 which was the latest update I could find
Life expectancy vs health expenditure 2022
It still shows the USA with lower life expectancy and much higher costs than other developed countries. Original is available on ourworldindata.org life-expectancy-vs-health-expenditure 2022