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The World Bank HNP Data

Health expenditure as a share of GDP around the world

Drivers of health cost variation

Variation in Health Care Spending:Target Decision Making, Not Geography

Variations in medical practice are well known and documented. Variations in costs, not so much, at least in our country. Now you can check what happens to geographic cost variations in US. Have a look at IOM report and you'll get the right approach to the issue:

Geographically-based payment policies may have adverse effects if higher costs are caused by other variables like beneficiary burden of illness, or area policies that affect health outcomes. Further, if there are substantial differences in provider practice patterns within regions, cutting payments to all providers within a region would unfairly punish low cost providers in high-spending regions and unfairly reward high cost providers in low spending regions.

A clear alert for any designer of payment systems. The Economist adds more details on this topic and finishes with an additional alert:

The transition from fee-for-service will inevitably be slow. In the meantime, it would help if the millions of Americans with private insurance had any idea what hospitals charge. In May CMS published hospitals’ price lists, showing huge gaps from one hospital to the next. But few patients pay these charges—it would be more useful to know the rate negotiated with their insurers. This transparency does not require restructuring the health system. It just requires hospitals to lift the veil on prices. If they don’t, a regulator may do it for them.

PS. For those that claim that our tax pressure is low. Have a look at taxes over labour costs (41,4%)  OECD average 35,6% (2012), why this figures are not broadcasted? The medium is the message? Who controls the medium? Does anybody consider that competitivenes is possible with such rates?

Where is the problem?

Rafael Nadal said in a recent article:

En el llibre Els mandarins explico que un dia, referint-se als ciclistes, Mariano Rajoy em va dir: "A veure, si tots es dopen, ¿on és el problema? Al final, el que guanya segueix essent el millor".

You'll find the right answer in an excellent article in The Economist: Doping in sport Athlete’s dilemma
The analogy between sports and doping fits quite well with politics and corruption. What next?

Evidence-based market failure

The market may fail to provide the right answer to some citizen's needs. We all know that. If we talk about long term care insurance, the failure is well documented. You may have a look at two NBER academic papers ( A and B ). If you want recent news on the US situation, WSJ provides you a detailed description of this big failure. Still waiting for the right public policy, here and there.

Difference in differences

We all know that the state as a unit of analysis for comparative health policy distorts the whole picture. It forgets that within the country there are huge differences in many key indicators. If you are not still convinced, have a look at the regional european statistics. For sure you'll avoid to achieve any conclusion about health care comparisons without taking into account such data.

A picture is worth a ...

Underestimation of health status

I am strongly convinced that health surveys used to estimate morbidity differ from objective measures. Such large differences are unknown and too often health policy and planning is exclusively based on self-assessed measures. A recent chapter in the book "Active ageing and solidarity between generations in Europe: First results from SHARE after the economic crisis" confirms my impression. Why is this so?. The authors say:

"Being female, older or highly-educated implies a lower probability to underestimate health, and this probability is higher if people are wealthier and have confidants in their social network. Besides, people are more likely to overestimate their health if they are older or wealthier; on the contrary, this probability is lower if they are homeowners or have someone in entourage to talk to."

Knowing how it works

Informe de la Central de Resultats. Àmbit hospitalari. Juliol 2013

Informe de la Central de Resultats. Àmbit sociosanitari. Juliol 2013

If there is a unique feature of catalan healthcare organization is the specific design for subacute, palliative and long-term care. This has been a strong effort to develop a network and capabilities that has taken many years. Now you can see details on the Central de Resultats related to "socio-sanitari"- care. The success is really high and patient satisfaction indicators reflect it.