More health care spending

Here is a fun thing to do with this graph. Let's see what the annual per capita spending looks like over a life time. Let's take Japan first. The average lifespan is 81.5 according to this graph and they spend about 2,000 standardized international dollars. That comes to a lifetime cost of $163,000. Now lets take the US. Per capita annual spending $4,500 times 77 years $346,500. Finally we take Cuba with a life expectancy of 76ish and about $150 annual expenses. This comes to$11,400.

I'm encouaged by these numbers because they suggest to me that our spending is way out of line with our goals and those goals are being achieved around the world for much less money. This means that even some marginal changes in how we do things could have a big impact on our longevity.