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India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

nytimes.com

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Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#91

Post by cjalmeida »

ucaetano wrote: post #9

Giving free healthcare is a good step, but the important question is how good will it be and how much will be covered. Brazil has 100% of its population (210M people) covered by free, single-payer, universal healthcare, resulting in a life expectancy of 75 years (US is 79, Japan and Switzerland with 83 IIRC). But your experience can vary dramatically. It all depends on how much money is actually being put on it (in h…

An alternative to life expectancy at birth is looking at the life expectancy at later years. A 40y woman in Brazil actually has about the same expected age at death as an American (~81y).

Expectancies for a 40y man, and for 20y at both ages are somewhat lower in Brazil. This is easy to explain due to deaths by violence and traffic accidents.

Funny to see that despite being chronically underfunded AND spending way less per capita than the US, the end results are similar.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#92

Post by Brakenshire »

dmix wrote: post #85

I really dislike when professional journalists call it "free healthcare", this should really needs to stop. It's not free, half the country will be paying for it with their taxes. In countries with public healthcare up to a third of their taxes expenditure goes to healthcare services, it's a significant expense and far from 'free'. Journalists should really start using "public healthcare" or "public health insurance"…

The US government spends as much as a percentage of GDP on healthcare as the UK, and a lot of the other countries which provide free universal healthcare. The marginal increase in healthcare coverage could actually be free, given the massive inefficiencies which exist in the current system.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#93

Post by zaroth »

TFA: “India’s government spent just 1.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product on health care in 2014, little changed as a proportion of the economy in 20 years, according to the World Bank. China, by contrast, spent 3.1 percent of its G.D.P. on health care in 2014; the United States spent 8.3 percent in the same year.”

CMS.gov: “U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, reaching $3.3 trillion or $10,348 per person. As a share of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, health spending accounted for 17.9 percent.”

World Bank puts total health care expenditure at 17.1% for the US in 2014 and 4.6% for India...

They must mean just US government spending, not counting private expenditure.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?end=2014...

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#94

Post by hueving »

cjalmeida wrote: post #91
ucaetano wrote: post #9

Giving free healthcare is a good step, but the important question is how good will it be and how much will be covered. Brazil has 100% of its population (210M people) covered by free, single-payer, universal healthcare, resulting in a life expectancy of 75 years (US is 79, Japan and Switzerland with 83 IIRC). But your experience can vary dramatically. It all depends on how much money is actually being put on it (in h…

An alternative to life expectancy at birth is looking at the life expectancy at later years. A 40y woman in Brazil actually has about the same expected age at death as an American (~81y). Expectancies for a 40y man, and for 20y at both ages are somewhat lower in Brazil. This is easy to explain due to deaths by violence and traffic accidents. Funny to see that despite being chronically underfunded AND spending way les…

Using life expectancies only gives you a view of healthcare preventing deaths. There is a vast distance between barely alive and a good quality of life.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#95

Post by t1o5 »

chris_wot wrote: post #60
t1o5 wrote: post #26

To be read as - the elections are coming. Mr Modi is seeking a second term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_elections_in_India NYT article to be read in tandem with this one https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-budget/with-electio...

If Mr Modi has rolled out free health care to 500 million people, saving millions of lives, probably a good thing and I hope it wins him some votes!

India already has free healthcare for all the citizens. Its just that its not efficient and well managed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#96

Post by dragonwriter »

zaroth wrote: post #93

TFA: “India’s government spent just 1.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product on health care in 2014, little changed as a proportion of the economy in 20 years, according to the World Bank. China, by contrast, spent 3.1 percent of its G.D.P. on health care in 2014; the United States spent 8.3 percent in the same year.” CMS.gov: “U.S. health care spending grew 4.3 percent in 2016, reaching $3.3 trillion or $…

CMS is reporting total US healthcare spending; TFA is discussing government healthcare spending; total (federal, state, and local) government spending was 45.2% of all health expenditures in the US [0], which applied to the 17.9% of GDP for total US healthcare expenditures gives 8.1% GDP public expenditures in 2016, very similar to the 8.3% TFA reports for 2014.

EDIT: Ah, my post crossed your edit, which recognizes the issue, but:

> They must mean just US government spending, not counting private expenditure.

The part you quote from TFA explicitly says it is comparing government expenditures.

[0] from the same CMS page you seem to be using: https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta...

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#97

Post by vkou »

thisisit wrote: post #4

I just hope it works very well because it seems every year there is one new populist measure. There is already: a. Food Security which provides food to nearly 2/3rd of the population or 820 million people. b. Minimum Support prices for grains which was hiked in this budget. Farmers also get loan waivers. c. National Rural Employment Guarantee which provides employment to over 100 million people

If ensuring people have access to food and water is populist, I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in whatever libertarian utopia is the converse.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#98

Post by [deleted] »

whack wrote: post #64

A key paragraph from the article which better explains the finances behind this policy: "The health care plan ... would offer 100 million families up ... $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India." It's much easier to provide universal healthcare, when medical costs are low. Finding ways to bring down costs in th…

[deleted]

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#99

Post by eugeniub »

dmix wrote: post #85

I really dislike when professional journalists call it "free healthcare", this should really needs to stop. It's not free, half the country will be paying for it with their taxes. In countries with public healthcare up to a third of their taxes expenditure goes to healthcare services, it's a significant expense and far from 'free'. Journalists should really start using "public healthcare" or "public health insurance"…

Somehow people insisting "don't say free" never extend this demand to free libraries, free fire department service, and so on.

Virtually everyone who has even a minor understanding of how society works intuitively understands that "free healthcare" is paid for with public money, just like "free libraries" are paid for with public money.

In fact, calling it "public health insurance" makes it actually more ambiguous and confusing. It sounds like access to it is open to anyone, like how access to a bookstore is open to anyone. "Free" is less ambiguous as to how much it costs to the person receiving the service.

Re: India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care

#100

Post by IanDrake »

jimjimjim wrote: post #67
IanDrake wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article, there already is free healthcare provided by the government. The problem is that model, predictably, sucks. “Although government-run hospitals are theoretically free for everyone, the waits are long, quality is poor and corruption is endemic.” So the left doesn’t want private healthcare providers to show them up.

why did you say 'the left'? why do you see the world as two opposing sides?

First, read the parent comment. The parent is asking specifically about “leftist”.

Second, why do I see it that way?

Because at the end of the day that is a legitimate way to divide people. While some will attempt to divide people based on meaningless physical attributes, I’m dividing people based on what they think. Why on earth would that be unusual or undersireable?

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