Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Big Picture is worth a lot more than a thousand words. I especially liked the pictures of Saturn this month.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

An excellent bar graph showing which components of US health care cost more than expected given our GDP. By far, the largest dollar difference, $436B, is in "outpatient care." What does that mean?
We pay doctors more than other people do, our doctors order more tests than other doctors do, our tests are more expensive than other people’s tests, and we have many more relatively expensive specialists and relatively few relatively cheap GPs.
We also spend less than expected, given our GDP, on "long-term and home care," but the difference is much smaller: $53B. What about administrative costs? $91B more than expected, given our GDP, is spent on "health admin and insurance."