Looking at life expectancies some more:
MJ Perry shows adjusting OECD numbers for non-health-related fatal injuries turns the US into #1, even using life expectancy at birth (which understates US life expectancy):
Is the U.S. system inferior to those in other developed countries based on life expectancy and cancer survival rates? Not according to economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt (Texas A&M) and John E. Schneider (University of Iowa), who argued in their 2006 book, The Business of Health: The Role of Competition, Markets and Regulation (AEI Press), that the U.S. system actually compares very favorably to the health-care systems of other nations.
1. The top chart above (data here) shows both: a) unadjusted life expectancies for the U.S. and other OECD countries, and b) standardized life expectancies which are adjusted for the effects of premature death resulting from non-health-related fatal injuries. For unadjusted life expectancy, the U.S. ranks #14 out of 16 countries, but for the adjusted standardized life expectancy the U.S. ranks #1.
mjperry.blogspot.com
In addition, to this, go back and consider the unadjusted numbers for Norway and Sweden and Iceland from MJ Perry's OECD table - 77.0, 77.7, and 78.0. Now compare those numbers to this:
America 2
Average life expectancy: 79 years.
Residents: 3.6 million low-income rural whites living in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska with income and education below the national average.
webmd.com
The US region most comparable ethnically to the Scandinavian countries beats Scandinavia.
Also consider Japan from the OECD table - 78.7. Compare to this from the same source:
America 1
Average life expectancy: nearly 85 years.
Residents: about 10 million Asians.
That's not quite all the Asians in the U.S.
Those in "America 1" live in counties where Pacific Islanders make up less than 40% of Asians. All other Asians living in the U.S. are in "America 3."
Again the US group most comparable to Japan beats Japan in life expectancy.
Now consider Germany and the UK, the two biggest ethnic contributers to white America, and Canada, also similar ethnically to the white America - 75.4, 75.6, and 77.7. Compare to:
America 3
Average life expectancy: nearly 78 years.
Residents: 214 million people -- mainly whites, with small numbers of Asians and Native Americans -- with average income and education slightly above the national average.
Again, America comes out ahead.
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So we see first, adjusting for fatal injuries puts the US in the #1 spot, even using life expectancies from birth which penalizes the US because of measurement differences.
Second, when portions of the US population that are comparable to foreign nations, again the US comes out ahead.
The parts of the American population which can best be compared
Thirdly, look at those survival rates for major cancers - the US beats the hell out of Europe:
The bottom chart displays five-year age-adjusted cancer survival rates for the U.S. and selected European countries, showing that the U.S. has the best record for five-year survival rates for six different cancers. In some cases the differences are huge: 81.2% in the U.S. for prostate cancer vs. 41% in Denmark and 47.4% in Italy; 61.7% in the U.S. for colon cancer vs. 39.2% in Denmark; 12% in the U.S. for lung cancer vs. 5.6% in Denmark.
Also interesting is the fact that there is often a significant difference between white and black cancer survival rates in the U.S., e.g. prostate cancer - 82.7% for whites vs. 69.2% for blacks (see red circled data in bottom chart). But even in that case, the five-year survival rate for blacks (69.2%) is still higher than for all European countries except Switzerland.
mjperry.blogspot.com |
