It’s really not in this context. The median household vis-a-vis income isn’t necessarily the median household vis-a-vis health consumption. More generally, health spending is massively subsidized by society writ large. Society’s willingness and capacity to pay is much better indicated by average income than the income of the median household (never mind issues pertaining to measurement of the income distribution within countries!). Furthermore, the vast majority of health expenditures in most high-income countries are spent on a small fraction of the population in any given year (those that are very sick, badly injured, etc.)

P.S.: It’s my blog.

Median and average are not good representations of a distribution.

Also even media leaves out the poor who can't afford expensive procedures. It's why Obamacare is ultimately doomed to fail too.

Just looking at your first sentence. I assume you meant median, not media since that is what your parent was talking about.

Median actually does a better job of including the poor than does mean. The reason is that median counts the number of affected people, whereas mean counts the amount of spending. Clearly the latter skews more towards the rich, for whom spending may approach infinity.

Average can be the median or the mean. Usually the government reports median when they say average.

I don't think I should be downvoted. This is just a fact. Hell, sometimes it can mean the mode.

https://www.google.com/search?q=average+definition