US Lags Other Countries in Healthcare

It turns out the French really do know how to live well.

By (I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was)

Health • September 2011 • Views: 1,215

TNR’s Jonathon Cohn looks at a recent study supported by the Commonwealth Fund measuring the success of the U.S. healthcare system in relation to those of other industrialized nations. He writes:

‘…when so many statistics make the U.S. look so bad by comparison, it’s hard to argue credibly that we have the world’s greatest health care system — and that a law designed to give more people insurance, while cutting costs through incentives for efficiency, will make it worse.’

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4 comments

freetoken Sat, Sep 24, 2011 12:16:00am

I’m always weary of these type of comparisons because the basis of country-to-country comparison usually are on a metric that might not be the best indicator of underlying demographic differences. In this case similarities in GDP/capita doesn’t cover differences in historical diets, median age, number of elderly, etc.

Having said that, I suspect that the great disparity of income in the US has something to do with why the death rate from treatable diseases is higher here than in some other countries, as poorer people here not only have less access to state of the art medicine but also live less healthy lifestyles.

researchok Sat, Sep 24, 2011 1:31:32am

re: #1 freetoken

Well said.

(I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was) Sat, Sep 24, 2011 3:00:01am

re: #1 freetoken

I’m always weary of these type of comparisons because the basis of country-to-country comparison usually are on a metric that might not be the best indicator of underlying demographic differences. In this case similarities in GDP/capita doesn’t cover differences in historical diets, median age, number of elderly, etc.

That’s actually adressed in the article:

As I’ve written in past discussions of such statistics on quality of health care, you don’t want to put too much stock in any one of them. They’re inevitably reflect inconsistent standards, subjectivity of measurement, and so on. But this particular statistic is probably a better measure of health care quality than, say, sheer life expectancy. More important, when so many statistics make the U.S. look so bad by comparison, it’s hard to argue credibly that we have the world’s greatest health care system — and that a law designed to give more people insurance, while cutting costs through incentives for efficiency, will make it worse.

boxhead Sat, Sep 24, 2011 3:08:08am

re: #3 000G

The western countries we are usually are compared against are much smaller than USA. That is why many believe that the States should handle healthcare as long as Country equal levels of coverage are maintained.

But, IMHO, the fact that this is even a question in USA is sad. It is as if the healthcare foes do not believe in a strong USA. They do not believe in “We The People”. United We Stand, Divided We Fall, and all that.

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