Health Care Debate Is Not A Pretty Picture, Yet

One problem with our continuing health care debate is a lack of pretty graphs to explain complicated issues.

Where is Ross Perot when you need him?

Say what you want about the European model of heath care, but you have to concede that they are way ahead of us when it comes to pretty pictures.

Take this recent graph from The Economist for example. It purports to explain the role of private insurance within developed countries that also have government sponsored plans.

Are His Red Or Blue?

And what conclusions can we draw from this gorgeous graph?

A study by the Boston Consulting Group concludes that countries relying mainly on insurance—such as France, Germany and the Netherlands—provide better care than those, like Britain, Italy and Spain, that are chiefly funded by taxes and which spend less on health care as a proportion of GDP.

I don’t for a second take these results as a given, but with a graph like that who can argue?

We could easily one-up the Euro-Quants by creating a graph like this for our individual states. Then we could color some of the balls red and some of the balls blue.

And oh, what headlines we’d have then…