Comments on: Overall Health Care Effectiveness http://newswithnumbers.com/2009/11/04/overall-health-care-effectiveness/ Learning More By Reading Less Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:25:57 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: numbersguy http://newswithnumbers.com/2009/11/04/overall-health-care-effectiveness/comment-page-1/#comment-92 numbersguy Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:06:11 +0000 http://newswithnumbers.com/?p=791#comment-92 Thanks for your comments Michael. The only thing I'm assuming is that if the US is spending a lot on health care we ought to see some tangible benefits from it. We see an excellent result regarding 5 year cancer survival, but that's the only one so far. However, I understand your point. It could be the diversity of the US population is a contributor to the below average scores. One way to adjust for it would be to track these statistics by race and income. Race here would be "native/predominant" race for country. It would compare Asians in Japan vs Hispanics in Spain and Caucasians in the US. For example, I found some information that hinted that African Americans have a slightly higher infant mortality rate than Caucasians. But that reference didn't make a strong claim and didn't affirm that this effect was present even after factoring out income differences. I'm only reporting on research done by others or statistics gathered by others. Sometimes I discuss correlations between statistics that previously were uncorrelated. This article is one such example, but it's not really original research. I'm at the mercy of published reports and I haven't found a report that directly addresses the issue you raise. If you find one I'd be interested in learning of it. Thanks for your comments Michael. The only thing I’m assuming is that if the US is spending a lot on health care we ought to see some tangible benefits from it. We see an excellent result regarding 5 year cancer survival, but that’s the only one so far. However, I understand your point. It could be the diversity of the US population is a contributor to the below average scores.

One way to adjust for it would be to track these statistics by race and income. Race here would be “native/predominant” race for country. It would compare Asians in Japan vs Hispanics in Spain and Caucasians in the US. For example, I found some information that hinted that African Americans have a slightly higher infant mortality rate than Caucasians. But that reference didn’t make a strong claim and didn’t affirm that this effect was present even after factoring out income differences.

I’m only reporting on research done by others or statistics gathered by others. Sometimes I discuss correlations between statistics that previously were uncorrelated. This article is one such example, but it’s not really original research. I’m at the mercy of published reports and I haven’t found a report that directly addresses the issue you raise. If you find one I’d be interested in learning of it.

]]> By: Michael http://newswithnumbers.com/2009/11/04/overall-health-care-effectiveness/comment-page-1/#comment-91 Michael Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:33:03 +0000 http://newswithnumbers.com/?p=791#comment-91 As always thought provoking presentation of information. It seems the data assumes that results are strongly correlated to health care systems. There are other variables that will affect the results of some of the categories. Simple examples are genetics and diet. Japan and Sweden are highly homogeneous societies, with a very high concentration of ethnically similar people. Whereas the US and to a lesser extent UK are hetrogeneous societies made up of a broad mix of ethnic and racial categories. The same is true of Japan and diet. There diet is credited with being weighted toward healthy food choices. It seems that both of these factors could be part of the factors affecting the statistics being analyized. Though I have no idea how to do it, it seems that to compare health systems one would need to normalize the data for factors that are affecting outcomes but not being compared. Thanks again for your fantastic information. As always thought provoking presentation of information. It seems the data assumes that results are strongly correlated to health care systems. There are other variables that will affect the results of some of the categories. Simple examples are genetics and diet. Japan and Sweden are highly homogeneous societies, with a very high concentration of ethnically similar people. Whereas the US and to a lesser extent UK are hetrogeneous societies made up of a broad mix of ethnic and racial categories. The same is true of Japan and diet. There diet is credited with being weighted toward healthy food choices. It seems that both of these factors could be part of the factors affecting the statistics being analyized. Though I have no idea how to do it, it seems that to compare health systems one would need to normalize the data for factors that are affecting outcomes but not being compared.

Thanks again for your fantastic information.

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