What Do People Need Healthcare For?

Today’s chart covers the top 10 diseases that people are living with - this is what people need healthcare for. There are some surprises in here, notably that both oral and genital herpes make the top 10 list.

Another big surprise here is that there is not one place to find the data in this chart. The CDC does not publish on the prevalance of the top diseases at a given time or even annually. The CDC publishes reports on a given disease every once in a while and regularly keeps track of a select number of infectious diseases, but not the most prevalent ones. So this data is compiled based on the CDC reports and statistically significant population studies of US adults. One would think that matching disease rates+severity with healthcare spending would be something to keep an eye on.

On Monday, we will see how these disease match against areas of healthcare spending.