Olympic medals or long life: what's the bottom line?
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 14723588.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
On a per capita basis, Australia spent more than seven times as much on its Sydney Olympic team as did Canada, to win four times as many medals. Compared with Australia, Canada spent an additional amount per capita (standardised to the purchasing power parity rate at year 2000) of US dollars 1605 per life-year gained on healthcare in 2000. Neither country is "right" or "wrong" in making these funding choices, but they highlight the need for more explicit discussion about what is being spent, what is obtained for the given expenditure and what society actually values.