Posted on 01/08/2008 8:38:21 AM PST by mngran2
France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.
If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.
Researchers ... of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.
They called such deaths an important way to gauge the performance of a countrys health care system.
Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health insurance about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million, according to U.S. government estimates probably was a key factor in the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized nations in the study.
I wouldnt say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you dont, I think thats the main problem, isnt it? Nolte said in a telephone interview.
In establishing their rankings, the researchers considered deaths before age 75 from numerous causes, including heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, certain bacterial infections and complications of common surgical procedures.
...
France did best with 64.8 deaths deemed preventable by timely and effective health care per 100,000 people, in the study period of 2002 and 2003. Japan had 71.2 and Australia had 71.3 such deaths per 100,000 people. The United States had 109.7 such deaths per 100,000 people, the researchers said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
What did happen to Glen Beck, anyway?
So all we need is a nanny state with nationalized health care and we will become a paradise????
Exactly.
Take my wifes Dutch cousin, an ex-secretary married to a trucker in Holland. In her mid 50s she came down with a heart condition that eventually prevented her from working. Does she have better access to affordable care than her typical US counterpart? Absolutely.
But if was 80, would she have received the sort of expensive government-funded cardiac surgery my wifes mother did - paid for by Medicare - at that age? Absolutely not.
Every country has to make choices about how to ration publicly funded health care, and every country rations it differently. In this country middle-aged people regularly go bankrupt as a result of medical expenses - never happens in Holland. In this country people with an actuarial expectation of only a few more years of life receive hundred of thousands of dollars worth of life-extending treatments, never happens in Holland.
One important difference between the US and most other advance economies is that they have a much more candid public discussion about how they ration these resources than we do. IMO that’s because many people on both the left ans right in this country are locked into ideological positions that prevent them from acknowledging that rationing does, and has, to take place at all.
Yes, it’s always about the health insurance nowadays. Remember that election cycle when it was always about “the children”?
Even with health insurance, many people would be too irresponsible and lazy to do something until crisis time. Look at all the obesity here now. A certain percentage of the country doesn’t care about its health until it’s too late. That won’t change with universal care. All that will change is the dumbing down of the greatest health care the world has ever seen.
All I know is that at this point he simply can’t afford to return to the U.S. He’s looked into because he would like to return.
were abortions included as preventable deaths?
“Abortion is a preventable death.”
According to the left pregnancy is a curable disease.
/sarc
“France health care system is a big mess with a huge deficit which is going worth and worth.”...
Maybe they can help with that speech impediment!
Yet...
That’s getting boring.
Every year there is a study (or a “movie”!) satying that the French have the best healthcare and the US one of the worst.
I am sure we could easily find some links to some studies saying the opposite but we have better things to do.
“We dont have hundreds of cars torched every night like France, do we?”
I like this one!
They are for sure the best in “car torching”!
“Tell that to the 15,000 French elderly who died in the heat wave a few years back.”
That’s true, but i am not sure they died in some hospitals.
Face it, the French eat less, therefore fewer die of fat-related diseases. Eating less and weighing less would contribute to preventing deaths in the US far more than insurance coverage would.
In the end, most people die of stupidity.
Dude... bite your tongue! We don't want "them" to be mad at us...
What an absurdity!
LOL.
Yeah, last thing we need is the “zero to seething in 30 seconds” crowd mad...
Great work! When I saw this headline I was going to post this very same fact.
I’m starting to feel like FR is it in terms of sane public discourse. Walls are closing in on me a little.
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