Health Care: Left or Right?

["Mason A. Clark" <masonc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

   Michael Hodges has graphical web pages, and a recent addition regarding
   health care and life expectancy drew a comment from Milton Friedman:

   Stay cool, take a deep breath, and read on. I post this because life
   expectancy, by some measure, is an indicator of economic success.

       http://home.att.net/~mwhodges/healthcare.htm

   It's a nice page with a collection of graphs showing the U.S. is behind
   other developed nations (including Hong Kong) in life expectance.
   But the U.S. spends more money.

   The following is pasted from that page:

   After reviewing this chart in the Celebration Report chapter of the
Grandfather
   Economic Report series, a letter to the author from Dr. Friedman on
   February 24, 1998 contained: "Improved life expectancy is most surely the
   most important single improvement in decades, but its interesting to
note from
   your chart that there has been a distinct slowdown in the rate of
increase and
   the slowdown comes shortly after enactment of Medicare and Medicaid.
   I do not believe that is an accident." In July 1998 I wrote back and
asked:
   "when you have a chance I would appreciate learning what you mean by the
   impact on these curves of Medicare and Medicaid." On September 4, 1998
   Dr. Friedman replied with the following: "With respect to my comment about
   Medicare and Medicaid, what I had in mind was that their passage marked
the
   beginning of a far greater involvement of government in the whole area
of medical
   care. The effect is to decrease the efficiency with which the resources
employed
   in medical care are used. We do have continued discoveries and findings
but
   probably at a slower pace. I do not know any other explanation as to why
there
   should have been a slowdown in the rate of increase of the length of
life since the
   1970s as shown clearly in your diagram.
   ---------end of quotation-------------------

    In fact, the graphs would appear to show dramatically the advantage of
    national health care systems.

    I noticed that a dramatic *increase* in the rate of increase of life
expectancy
    occurred about 1970 and continued through the 70's, then slowed.
Apparently the
    sudden *decrease* in growth rate of GDP coincided with an equally sudden
   *increase* in the improvement rate of life expectancy, especially for
males.

    so:      Life expectancy growth = k * degree of nationalization / GDP
growth rate

             Mason C