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.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-vs-europe-life-expectancy-and-cancer.html
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.
http://www.webmd.com/news/20060913/top-states-for-life-expectancy
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.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-vs-europe-life-expectancy-and-cancer.html
A better way to judge a health care system is to look at disease outcomes—how people fare after diagnosis. Generally speaking, the problem with this approach is that data can be limited; most family doctors—not to mention countries—don’t collect data on strep throat or depression.
But one disease, cancer, offers an opportunity to make a reasonable international comparison. For one thing, every Western country collects good data(mainly five-year survival rates but, increasingly, ten-year outcomes as well). And the disease is common: In its first-ever study on cancer around the world, the American Cancer Society recently reported that twelve million people around the world were diagnosed with cancer in 2007 alone. Finally, cancer is a research and treatment priority, both in the United States and abroad.
......
The CONCORD study finds that the United States leads in the field of breast and prostate cancer. France excelled in treating women’s colorectal cancer and Japan in men’s colorectal cancer. And the United States clearly leads other nations in overall survival.Regrettably, great discrepancies do exist between white and black Americans and among residents of different cities. That said, given a cancer diagnosis, patients overall do better here than anywhere else.
These international results replicate those that appeared in a broader cancer review of Europe and the United States, published in September 2007 in The Lancet Oncology. For the sixteen types of cancer examined in that paper, American men have a five-year survival rate of 66 percent, compared with only 47 percent for European men. In Europe, only Sweden has an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent. American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared with 56 percent for European women; only five European countries have an overall survival rate of more than 60 percent.
Looking at specific cancers yields striking results: For men, the bladder cancer survival rate in the United States is 15 percent higher than the European average. With prostate cancer, the gap is even larger: 28 percent. For American women, the uterine cancer survival rate is 5 percent higher than the European average; for breast cancer, it is 14 percent higher. The United States has survival rates of 90 percent or higher for five cancers (skin melanoma, breast, prostate, thyroid, and testicular), but there is only one cancer for which the European survival rate reaches 90 percent (testicular). Lung cancer, once considered a death sentence, now has better survival rates over five years—and Americans do better than Europeans, 16 percent versus 11 percent.
.....
avid Gratzer, M.D., is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His latest book, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Encounter Books, 2006), is now available in paperback.
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/socialism-and-cancer
... America has the finest health care delivery system in the world. Let's not forget that and put it at risk in the name of reform. Desperate souls across the globe flock to our shores and cross our borders every day to seek our care. Why? Our system provides cures while the government-run systems from which they flee do not. Compare Europe's common cancer mortality rates to America's: breast cancer - 52 percent higher in Germany and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom; prostate cancer - a staggering 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway; colon cancer - 40 percent higher in the United Kingdom.
Look closer at the United Kingdom. Britain's higher cancer mortality rate results in 25,000 more cancer deaths per year compared to a similar population size in the United States. But because the U.S. population is roughly five times larger than the United Kingdom's, that would translate into 125,000 unnecessary American cancer deaths every year. This is more than all the mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, cousins and children in Topeka, Kan. And keep in mind, these numbers are for cancer alone. America also has better survival rates for other major killers, such as heart attacks and strokes. Whatever we do, let us not surrender the great gains we have made. First, do no harm. Lives are at stake.
.....
Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a radiologist in Kansas. He is Barack Obama's second cousin once removed. President Obama's great-great grandfather, Thomas Creekmore McCurry, is Dr. Wolf's great-grandfather. Dr. Wolf's mother, Anna Margaret McCurry, was five years older than Mr. Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. The two were childhood friends until the Dunhams moved from Kansas to Seattle in 1955.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/11/obama-family-health-care-fracas/
Here’s a Second Opinion
by Scott W. Atlas
Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose. By Scott W. Atlas.
Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America’s health care system.
1. Americans have better SURVIVAL rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast CANCER mortality is 52 percent higher in GERMANY than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate CANCER mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal CANCER among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
2. Americans have lower CANCER mortality rates than Canadians. Breast CANCER mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostateCANCER is 184 percent higher, and colon CANCER among men is about 10 percent higher.
3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries. Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit from statin drugs, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease, are taking them. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons, and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
4. Americans have better access to preventive CANCER screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:
Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.
More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).
Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”
6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for CANCER. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”
8. Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).
9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.
10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.
Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and care for the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/5589 |
