5 Democratic Talking Points Debunked

5. Our Healthcare is “an Embarrassment” to the World

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Bernie Sanders said multiple times throughout the CBS debate how embarrassing the current US medical system is. Aside from appeal to emotion fallacies, Sanders was accurate to say that we spend more than any other country in the world on medicine. We do spend more on healthcare than other countries, but there is a good reason for this if we analyze the data.

Comparing healthcare spending of other OECD countries, healthcare spending is about 16% of the US GDP, according to a report by OECD.org. This figure surpasses most other figures on the chart by about 5-6%. Now, this is shocking until you realize that the figure separates public and private healthcare expenditures.

If you compare public spending on healthcare for these countries, the United States actually spends less on healthcare than countries like Sweden, France, Germany, and even Canada. So the validity of this statement depends on whether or not you’re comparing the US Government’s spending on healthcare compared to the rest of the world, the US private sector’s spending compared to the rest of the world, or both.

But, given that Bernie was comparing the US spending including the private and public sector, there are reasons for this based off of how our economy is structured. You cannot just say that because we spend more in a specific area, it is a bad thing. You have to prove why spending in that area is bad.

The narrative of this argument is that the US spends more on healthcare than any country in the world as a percent of our GDP because our country is unhealthy and our private healthcare system is inefficient. The reality is that we spend more on healthcare because the FDA approves more drugs and our scientific publications are more active.

According to data from the WHO, the US lifespan is actually well above the world average. The average global human lifespan was 71 years old as of 2013, while America’s is approximately 79.8. The notion that our country is spending more solely on the basis of health is not true. There are a culmination of reasons why our private spending is so much higher.

Furthermore, our FDA approves drugs at a much faster rate than that of Canada or Europe. The USFDA actually approves drugs 2 months faster than the EMA or Health Canada, a study by the New England Medical Journal suggests. This would no doubt contribute to the fact that the private healthcare expenditures are higher than the rest of the OECD. The US creates drugs at a quicker rate, so there is more spending.

Additionally, the US releases more peer-reviewed publications than any other country on Earth. Data compiled by Forbes from SciVal Analytics showed that in 2009 alone, 40% of all publications in the world came from the United States. Also indicated is that the US has more total publications than the next 11 countries combined.

It’s amazing how much more you spend on healthcare when you’re the lead medical researcher in the world, isn’t it?