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Compare Health Expenditures

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After the end of World War II, there was an ideological battle between the capitalistic ideals and the communist ideals. Many decades later we can still see the remnant of the ideological differences between the countries of each side of the iron curtain. One of the ways we can interpret the differences between each country in Europe’s economic and ideological advancement is by comparing the Health expenditures. Health expenditures are defined by CIA World Fact Book as the statistic that provides the total expenditure on health a percentage of GDP. Those expenditures are activities performed either by institutions or individuals through application of medical knowledge and technology, the primary purpose of which is to promote, restore, or maintain health. This percentage can differentiate countries that spend a lot on health compared to other; those countries that spend a lot on health are typically more economically progressed. The best example of which is the United States being at the top of the list, spending 17.90% of their GDP on health expenditures. Meanwhile the bottom of the list has Burma spending a meager 1.80% of their GDP on health on expenditures. …show more content…

If we grab 20 contiguous countries in Europe spanning from Spain to Ukraine, we get a well-balanced group of countries. After categorizing the map and coloring, we can observe a clear pattern that any promoter of capitalism, such as Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, would approve. In this map that divides the countries by quartiles we can discern a pattern that divides West-East Europe. While all of the western side belongs to the 1st or 2nd quartiles, the eastern side is mostly in the 3rd or even 4th

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