Healthcare: Breakin' Down the Premiums in Consumerville

[DSpencer]

Re: Healthcare: Breakin' Down the Premiums in Consumerville

26% of Americans are obese, 32% of French smoke. Looks like a complete wash to me.

Appreciating the comments that this drawn out debate is distracting from the thread I will minimize my comment to the above.

Obesity:
America: 30.6%
France: 9.4%

Smoking:
America: 1,196 cigarettes per adult, per year
France: 876 cigarettes per adult, per year

So we have over 3 times the percent of obese people and smoke more cigarettes per person per year. What you call a wash looks like a relative disaster for America to me.

The obesity number differs slightly from yours, there's many floating around so I put in links. The smoking is per capita and not by percentage of population. It appears that more people smoke in France, but the smokers in America are much heavier smokers. Very difficult to know which is worse in this case. The same question exists for the severity of obesity. I don't have data for that, but I'd put money on America having more obese people and the obese people being relatively heavier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ob...son_-_path.svg
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/he...health-obesity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ion_per_capita

[c1ue]

Re: Healthcare: Breakin' Down the Premiums in Consumerville

Obesity:
America: 30.6%
France: 9.4%

Smoking:
America: 1,196 cigarettes per adult, per year
France: 876 cigarettes per adult, per year

So we have over 3 times the percent of obese people and smoke more cigarettes per person per year. What you call a wash looks like a relative disaster for America to me.

The numbers aren't exactly equal, but neither are they 2x different.

And that's what the health care spending difference is:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/he...tal-per-capita

# 1	United States:	$4,631.00 per capita
# 2	Switzerland:	$3,222.00 per capita
# 3	Germany:	$2,748.00 per capita
# 4	Iceland:	$2,608.00 per capita
# 5	Canada:	$2,535.00 per capita
# 6	Denmark:	$2,420.00 per capita
# 7	France:	$2,349.00 per capita
= 8	Norway:	$2,268.00 per capita