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| From the International Social Security Association |
Public spending on incapacity (sickness, disability and occupational injury). Click on image to view full size. Note how low the United States is in comparison to other countries.
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| From the International Social Security Association |
4 comments:
Improving that would be a fine way to make America great again.
So I was going to point out that the USA has a significant GDP per capita, which could suggest that we pay a smaller portion of our GDP to healthcare as our actual GDP is significantly larger than many of the other countries on the list...however most of the countries which spend more on healthcare than we do have either close to or a greater GDP per capita than the USA. Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Iceland, and the Netherlands are only slightly lower with about 75-80% of our GDP per capita, Norway is actually about 15% higher GDP per capita, and Luxemborg is nearly double our GDP per capita and spends nearly double the USA's percentage of GDP on healthcare...so yes, we are cheapskates.
The U.S. spends approximately 19% of its GDP on healthcare (which is a separate issue from incapacity), which crowds out our ability to be more generous on social insurance such as incapacity/disability. It's not necessarily that we are cheapskates. But we spend far too much for what we get in healthcare that forces us to be cheapskates on other issues (not that I necessarily think we would have more robust social insurance if we could get a handle on our healthcare expenditures... so we may in the end be cheapskates).
Agree with 10:04 but also note that Canada and Chile, outside of the USA are the only other contributors to incapacity spending in this hemisphere. So if those in other parts of our hemisphere wish treatment or services, where do you think they will go? Something to ponder.
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