Health Care Mantra

by Dave Price on October 27, 2009

in Politics

Advocates of socializing health care have asked: how can America’s relatively free market spend the most money on health care, yet have among the worst outcomes?

The answer is, we don’t. The oft-cited WHO rankings don’t really measure quality of health care, preferring to judge things like “fairness of financial contribution” and measures like life expectancy (which is more strongly correlated to lifestyle than health care) or infant mortality (other countries use different standards and so generally record more infant deaths as stillbirths than we do, perversely making their numbers better even though they sometimes let marginal infants die).

American health care is simply the best in the world, and by many measures ithe competition isn’t even close:

U.S. does 2x as many transplants as OECD average

U.S. has best cancer survival rates in OECD  

Death panels in Britain are putting people to death who could have recovered

Death panels: now in kids’ sizes too! Infants being left to die.

U.S. has more MRIS “it was found that Canada had 4.6 MRI scanners per million population while the U.S. had 19.5 per million”

U.S. has about twice as many MRIs as OECD average

The U.S. gets new drugs 1 year sooner “On average, the FDA approval came 1 year ahead of clearance by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA).”

“Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway.”

“The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country”

U.S. performs more operations than any country in the world.

Lower U.S. life expectancy does not argue U.S. has worse health care due to lifestyle factors and differences in how infant mortality is reported

Please feel free to steal, share and cite any or all of these links early and often. If anyone else has links to add, please share in the comments!  Don’t let them take the best care in the world away from us without a fight!

{ 3 comments }

1 Hank Barnes October 27, 2009 at 11:13 pm

But, see, Starfield, in JAMA (2000):

About 220,000 americans die each year from hospital infections, mis-treatments and prescription drugs.

Way bigger problem than the silly swine flu.

I would say this about American health care:

1. Emergency Room: Best in the world. If you get hit by a bus, and get to an ER, you have a better shot at surviving than anywhere in the world.

2. High End Surgery: Best in the world. If you need to separate Siamese Twins or need some high-falutin’ neurosurgery or reconstructive plastic surgery, we are no doubt the tops.

3. Diagnostics: Lotta fancy tests –MRIs at the peak.

But, a lot of the other stuff is just bells and whistles and crap.

Good book: “Overtreated: Why too much medicine is making us sicker and poorer.”

–HB

2 Kristian H October 28, 2009 at 7:44 am

About 220,000 americans die each year from hospital infections, mis-treatments and prescription drugs.

What is that per capita?
What is that per patient hour/day/visit?

We are what, the 3 rd most populous country in the world? Do you think India and China or the EU as a whole (which is bigger than the U.S.) have fewer deaths?

Taking a raw number out of context tells me nothing.

3 Don Pesci October 28, 2009 at 11:53 am

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