CORRELATIONS: Canaries in the Gold Mine

I found these graph…and they are fascinating!

We live in a world where everything is quantified. Metric measurement is more than a pastime. It is the Present time. We long to find meaning within meaning and to decipher the basis of existence itself. So bent in this stream of consciousness, we find correlations that give us the necessary tools to go on. To go on where, though? Where is there, and why do we need to go there? Indeed, simple as this looks, the go-between prism of simple deception is embedded in this art of the present culture. Using a sophisticated illusion of coruscating colors and mathematical correlates a graph of believability and a propagandist, moralist and a prophet is born. A great enchanter uses form, style and the magic of his or her statistical genius to convince others.

What exactly does the first graph represent? Let us break it apart at the spine and unhinge the very concepts it purports to appoint into our consciousness. Or simply smash through the paper-lined facade!

On its face it is obvious; the U.S. costs is an outlier and as you traverse the landscape, you find that the costs do not equate to the life expectancy. “Oh my!” one would exclaim, “That is travesty!” But is it?

Lets break down the issues one by one:

First allow me to bring into focus the Life expectancy, of select countries data below to illustrate the point...

Country	Life expectancy	Median Age	Birth rate/ 1000
Japan	84	47	9
Spain	83	42	11
Switzerland	83	43	10
Italy	83	45	9
France	82	41.5	13
Canada	82	42.1	11
Norway	82	40	13
Sweden	82	42	12
Germany	81	46.7	8
United Kingdom	81	41	13
Denmark	80	42	11
United States	79	37	14
Poland	77	39.6	11
India	66	27	22
Uganda	59	16	45
Sierra Leone	46	19	39

YELLOW: Birth rate/1000, GREEN: Median Age, BLUE: Life Expectancy

As you can clearly see based on these Life expectancy and Median age data that there is a correlation between the two. In other words as the Median age goes up so does the Life Expectancy. Makes sense, doesn't it?

The baby boomers in the western nations are aging rapidly and the advancement in science and overall Public Health measures have drastically reduced the early age mortality causes significantly. And that is a good thing. As the Median age advances a larger cohort of baby boomers will enter the next decade of existence thus raising the Life expectancy with it. See for instance the difference between the first 11 countries and their median ages and then the United States. It is obvious that as the median age increases to 42 that is 5 more years then the present the United States Life Expectancy will rise 5+ years as well, bringing it to the 84+ years.

See here: http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Median-age/Total

There is another piece that needs to be fitted into the mix and that is the birth rate. Increasing birth rate leads to reducing the median age as the newborn pull on the median age to the left side a bit. If the birth rate in Japan and the rest of the European Union continues to decline as is evident today, (thus Germany’s need to import outside workers) and the median age advances more rapidly the Life Expectancy will rise even faster. Human beings survive not from seeking or taking medicines but from self-governance with healthy lifestyle. In the United States if the Birth rate continues to exceed that of the EU nations the median age will rise slower, hence the Life expectancy might take time getting to the Japanese Shangri La.

Now let us look at Costs:

In healthcare costs,  the United States is definitely an outlier. Of that there is no question. But what exactly is the genesis of these high costs. Is it Medical Care? Is it the cost of examination, interpretation, treatment (Medical and Surgical) and management of acute and chronic illnesses? There is the essence of the economic costs breakdown…

If one looks at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one comes to an understanding that the direct increase of costs is something other than those issues outlined above. In this graph the real increase in costs seems to be the middle management that promulgates policy and oversees such policy measures and not direct patient care itself!  It appears that there are way too many overseers, who do little except to keep their own job secure. 

Do you still think that the Cost of healthcare is correlated to the Life Expectancy to the extent advocated by the "experts"? Still? Not convinced yet?

The argument posed by the middling managers is that physicians are not to be trusted in providing good medical care therefore the need for such oversight. Really? How exactly does the oversight help? Apparently if one were to use this argument then the cost of care has really not budged the needle in the direction they themselves think it should have.

Is that the failure of their argument?

Given another decade or two the median age in the United States will climb due to the booming boomers, will these experts claim that their measures in healthcare policy have lead to a increase in Life Expectancy and therefore their presence is justified, appropriate and necessary? All one has to do is look at the evidence and then figure out the bogus nature of the argument. Yet look a decade ahead and if business is as usual, the headlines will proclaim their pseudo-virtue.

And then there are the Insurers...
As long as the premiums can go up and capital outflow can be kept to a minimum by denials of claims and delayed payments, well then life is good until it no longer is...

The thread still finds the needle to sew the perfect fabric; Risk nothing and Reward from everything as in this graph below...

If you were thinking that there might be a correlation between the Consumer Price Index (in Health) and the Health Insurance premiums? Well you guessed it, there is... But oh there is a divergence, how can that be?

Is there any wonder that the middle class average U.S. citizens are having a real problem in meeting there medical expenses...

There are a varied number of graphs about healthcare system waste...here is one of them:

But they seem to point to the flagrant increase of physician incomes. Is that so? Look here...

There seems to be discrepancy in what they, the experts and middling managers at some private, political and governmental levels, say about how the physicians are the cause of the whole healthcare cost problem and yet there is this...

The graphs below are interactive and show the overall decline in the young population and a rise in the elderly population and various OECD nations. Enough said!

Now you must be able to see that the canaries in the gold mine are the patients and their physicians. While the miners are wearing top-hats!