Below is an interesting podcast with venture capitalist Bill Gurley talking about how technology might transform and improve health care.
Based on their discussion, the US spends about 17-18% of GDP on health care. In most Western European countries and in Canada, it’s about half of that.
In Singapore, it’s only 4% of GDP and there doesn’t appear to be any demonstrable differences in terms of health outcomes.
If you can’t see the podcast embedded below, click here.
This is a terrific set of maps published by The Washington Post (2015) using data originally collected and published by Peter Kerpedjiev:
What they show is how far you can travel in a 24 hour period using only trains and brisk walking from a collection of 28 European cities. In a few cases, such as from London to Dublin, a ferry ride is also included.
Here’s a zoom in on London:
The obvious takeaway is that Western Europe is very well connected, whereas many parts of Eastern Europe are not. Some cities, such as Tallinn (Estonia) and Podgorica (Montenegro) are almost completely disconnected.
Of course today there’s stiff competition from air travel.