[extropy-chat] Health data

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

...didn't Robin Hanson just get through presenting the evidence that 
increased healthcare spending does squat to decrease mortality?

Does anyone remember this except me?  Or was I hallucinating the entire 
thread?

Countries with socialized healthcare can have year-long waits to see 
doctors, according to what I've heard.  That is certainly a measure of 
inconvenience.  The counterintuitive fact that this has no effect on 
mortality just goes to say that something is wrong with healthcare in 
both socialized and market countries.

Personally, I suspect that healthcare spending is ineffective for the 
same reason that charity to Africa is ineffective.  Everyone is too busy 
with socially expected cheering to pay any attention to outcome 
measures.  They don't want to hear about what's effective and what's 
not.  They're purchasing warm glow by throwing money at the problem, and 
would rather not have to think any more than that.  If you start calling 
the cost-effectiveness into question, they get all indignant because 
you're trying to destroy the warm glow that they paid good money for.

And for as long as that remains true, increased healthcare spending will 
fail to purchase increased health.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence