Following my rant about government run systems, as related to healthcare, a close friend pointed out a graph to me that made his "stomach turn". At first blush - mine turned too. For reference, the graph is here: http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-care.html. It lays out the cost of health care verses life expectancy. Initial reaction is "how can we spend so much more than and have a lower life expectancy?" After a day of reflection, however, the graph doesn't turn my stomach - it just makes me angry.

On the graph the notation says "Dollar figures reflect all public and private spending on care, from doctors visits to hospital infrastructure." Read that again, especially about hospital infrastructure. So - we can "fix" this problem by eliminating half our hospitals. We can forego expensive MRI or CAT scan machines. We can stop elective surgery. Botox injections. Viagra or Cialis. Get rid of all this "care" and "infrastructure" and the graph would look much better. We can approach the cost per person in Mexico of $823 per person. Just get rid of those pesky expensive hospitals, nursing homes, and other care facilities.

Then, there is the basic assumption of the graph that correlates cost to life expectancy. Does spending more money on health care cause longer lives? Just like spending more money on education makes for higher graduation rates. Just wrong. How about a graph of obesity rates verses life expectancy? Or physical activity verses life expectancy? Maybe diet verses life expectancy? I can provide studies that prove correlations for these factors, but no where does it say that spending more money will or should increase life expectancy. Plotting these two elements together on a graph makes as much sense as plotting the number of dogs and cats per nation against life expectancy.

As Mark Twain said (which he attributed to Disraeli) "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics".