USA! USA! We’re (Almost) #1 in Machines That Go Ping

Membership Ticker

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you—especially at a moment like this. That's really it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a much shorter than normal three-week window, by November 5, so we can keep right on doing it. Please pitch in early to help us get there.

$250,000

You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

I was fiddling around looking for something unrelated, and happened to run across this chart from the latest OECD “Health at a Glance” report. We’re #1 in health spending, of course, and we pay inflated prices for just about everything. But what’s equally interesting is what we spend all that money on. More doctors? Nope. More nurses? Not really. More hospital beds? Nah.

So what do we spend our money on? Technology, baby! Who cares about having plenty of doctors as long as we have lots of machines that go ping? The Japanese may be serious technophiles too, but at least they also have plenty of hospital beds and reasonable spending levels.