SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

by Steven D. Levitt

tell mom about this.

Interestingly, health outcomes are largely uncorrelated to spending. This means the best doctors don’t spend any more money—for tests, hospital admittance, and so on—than the lesser doctors. This is worth pondering in an era when higher health-care spending is widely thought to produce better health-care outcomes. In the United States, the health-care sector accounts for more than 16 percent of GDP, up from 5 percent in 1960, and is projected to reach 20 percent by 2015.

which of course explains why other nations do better or equal with less.

So it may be that going to the hospital slightly increases your odds of surviving if you’ve got a serious problem but increases your odds of dying if you don’t. Such are the vagaries of life.