When comparing apples to apples, the U.S. has the highest life expectancy among Western Countries.
There have been studies that show when factoring out differences in car crashes, homicides, infant mortality rates (including measurement differences), etc., the average American lives substantially longer than the average Western European.
Moreover, the quality of life is better for Americans than Western Europeans. For example:
“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. But even in that case, the five-year survival rate for blacks (69.2%) is still higher than for all European countries except Switzerland.”
Moreover, here’s what a recent study concluded (health care is a good just like any other good):
“Competition in health care spurs innovation, induces efficiency, and enhances quality, just as it does in other industries. The Business of Health examines the influence of market competition and government regulation on hospitals, health insurance, managed care plans, and prescription drug advertising. Reformers must determine which components of the system are suitable for market competition and which would benefit from more direct government control. While some hybrid of the two approaches has strong political appeal, two things are clear: the current U.S. system fails to take full advantage of the benefits of market forces, and the alleged benefits of government regulation may be greatly exaggerated.”
There’s plenty of evidence single payer systems are much worse. For example:
“Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province’s population) can’t find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who’d get a doctor’s appointment.
These problems are not unique to Canada — they characterize all government-run health care systems.
Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled — 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available. And so on.
Single-payer systems — confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists and substandard treatment — are starting to crack, however. Canadian newspapers are filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care. Many Canadians, determined to get the care they need, have begun looking not to lotteries — but to markets.”
For those who may read Peak’s post here, what he is citing for cancer survival is a time based study which is a flawed approach to determining the effectiveness of cancer treatments by country or region.
That problem is embodied in three words: Lead time bias. Remember lead time bias? I’ve written about it enough times before, particularly in the context of discussing over-diagnosis and overtreatment. Basically, using the time from diagnosis to the time of death is not the correct way to analyze data like this. To explain why, a picture is worth a thousand words (not that it’ll stop me from writing a thousand words, as is my wont, because to me a picture plus a thousand words is equal to two thousand words).
I think, many Americans are in for a rude awakening from this on-going deep depression, Obamacare, and Baby-Boomers retiring (the last of the Baby-Boomers, born between 1946-64, will reach 65 in 2029).
Per the Canadian experience with single payer, all the quotes are from an op-ed by one Canadian doctor with examples from 1997 and the op-ed is published 2007 with no links to the purported “research” supposedly helping to support broader generalizations.
The start goes like this:
“The information in his editorial contains the information Michael Moore doesn’t want Americans to know:”
Enough said about this editorial offered as ?something?
“Finally, the authors examine whether Canada has a more equitable distribution of health outcomes, as might be expected in a single-payer system with universal coverage. To do so, they estimate the correlation across individuals in their personal income and personal health status and compare this for the two countries. Surprisingly, they find that the health-income gradient is actually more prominent in Canada than in the U.S.”
run75441, your article implies the efficacies of the huge wave of U.S. cancer drugs approved by the FDA, over the past 20 years, were worthless and the U.S. is better at screening for cancer.
Also, someone asserted the reason inflation in health care has been much lower is doctors and hospitals became much more efficient preparing for Obamacare.
However, there are other factors, e.g. the deep depression (i.e. Americans scaling back on health care), slowing increases in Medicare spending, many “blockbuster” drug patents expiring in 2011 and 2012, etc..
The CMS’ Office of the Actuary concluded “…the economic slowdown was largely responsible for the slow growth in health spending.”
I have many Canadian friends that I see from time to time. They BRAG about their healthcare system. I’ve never been to Canada so I must take their word. My friends are “well off” and that may make a difference. The last that I talked to one of my friends was last spring. I asked about their healthcare and they said it didn’t cost them anything so I assume that wealth wasn’t a factor.
Gotta love a US-Canada comparison that admits it is
” Focusing on whites (to sidestep differences in the racial composition of the two populations and the problem of racial disparities in health outcomes)”
and then goes its merry way to a conclusion without any attempt whatsoever to account for 40% of Americans. I wonder what the waiting time for a knee replacement for a black man in Compton, CA is?
Course this ranks right up there with fighting the straw man of
“someone asserted the reason inflation in health care has been much lower is doctors and hospitals became much more efficient preparing for Obamacare”,
which I have not seen anyone who says the ACA is totally responsible for lower inflation, but then goes on to list other factors that everyone lists.
Humorously, these valid reasons include ” slowing increases in Medicare spending” and strangely enough does not credit the ACA for its obvious role in slowing that increase.(see readmission, etc.)
When people say the U.S. spends more on health care per capita than other countries, and cite a $2.9 trillion health care industry, they seem to ignore the fact that it includes much more research and development, more and better capital equipment, better clinics and hospitals, higher quality treatments, highly specialized doctors, etc..
The U.S. spends roughly $3,000 a year more per capita on health care than the average of developed OECD countries. Yet, U.S. per capita income is well over $10,000 a year more compared to those countries.
The WHO rated U.S. health care below Cuba, and yet stated the U.S. is #1 in the world in both labor (e.g. doctors, nurses, specialists, etc.) and in capital (e.g. hospitals, equipment, technology, etc.). I’m sure, the U.S. is also #1 in the world in in research and development, and in new therapies and drugs, which not only benefit the U.S., they benefit the rest of the world.
EMichael: Good point, I know that Native Americans here don’t get much of any modern healthcare and have short lifespans. I imagine Canada is just as bad toward First Nations, or worse.
“more and better capital equipment, better clinics and hospitals, higher quality treatments, highly specialized doctors, etc.” –PT–
Florida Hospital in Orlando, FL is ranked nationally in 8 adult specialties. It was also high-performing in 4 adult specialties, as shown below. Florida Hospital is a 2,170-bed general medical and surgical facility with 122,729 admissions in the most recent year reported…..
Cardiology & Heart Surgery
Best Rank in This Specialty #32
On March 21, Dill was supposed to bring her three children over to the South Orlando home of her best friend, Kathleen Voss Woolrich. The two had cultivated a close friendship since 2008; they shared all the resources that they had, from debit-card PINs to transportation to baby-sitting and house keys. They helped one another out, forming a safety net where there wasn’t one already. They “hustled,” as Woolrich describes it, picking up short-term work, going out to any event they could get free tickets to, living the high life on the low-down, cleaning houses for friends to afford tampons and shampoo. They were the working poor, and they existed in the shadows of the economic recovery that has yet to reach many average people.
So on March 21, when Dill never showed up with her three kids (who often came over to play with her 9-year-old daughter, Zahra), Woolrich was surprised she didn’t even get a phone call from Dill. She shot her a text message – something along the lines of “Thanks for ditching me, LOL” – not knowing what had actually happened. Dill, who was estranged from her husband and raising three children aged 3, 7 and 9 by herself, had picked up yet another odd job. She was selling vacuums on a commission basis for Rainbow Vacuums. On that day, in order to make enough money to survive, she made two last-minute appointments. At one of those appointments, in Kissimmee, she collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor.
Dill’s death was not unpredictable, nor was it unpreventable. She had a documented heart condition for which she took medication. But she also happened to be one of the people who fall within the gap created by the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of the Affordable Care Act’s intention to make health care available to everyone. In the ensuing two years, 23 states have refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida, which rejected $51 billion from the federal government over the period of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid program to include people like Dill and Woolrich – people who work, but do not make enough money to qualify for the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. They, like many, are victims of a political war – one that puts the lives and health of up to 17,000 U.S. residents and 2,000 Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the name of rebelling against President Barack Obama’s health care plan.
When comparing apples to apples, the U.S. has the highest life expectancy among Western Countries.
There have been studies that show when factoring out differences in car crashes, homicides, infant mortality rates (including measurement differences), etc., the average American lives substantially longer than the average Western European.
Moreover, the quality of life is better for Americans than Western Europeans. For example:
“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. But even in that case, the five-year survival rate for blacks (69.2%) is still higher than for all European countries except Switzerland.”
Moreover, here’s what a recent study concluded (health care is a good just like any other good):
“Competition in health care spurs innovation, induces efficiency, and enhances quality, just as it does in other industries. The Business of Health examines the influence of market competition and government regulation on hospitals, health insurance, managed care plans, and prescription drug advertising. Reformers must determine which components of the system are suitable for market competition and which would benefit from more direct government control. While some hybrid of the two approaches has strong political appeal, two things are clear: the current U.S. system fails to take full advantage of the benefits of market forces, and the alleged benefits of government regulation may be greatly exaggerated.”
There’s plenty of evidence single payer systems are much worse. For example:
“Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians (or 12% of that province’s population) can’t find family physicians. Health officials in one Nova Scotia community actually resorted to a lottery to determine who’d get a doctor’s appointment.
These problems are not unique to Canada — they characterize all government-run health care systems.
Consider the recent British controversy over a cancer patient who tried to get an appointment with a specialist, only to have it canceled — 48 times. More than 1 million Britons must wait for some type of care, with 200,000 in line for longer than six months. In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died. Across Europe, state-of-the-art drugs aren’t available. And so on.
Single-payer systems — confronting dirty hospitals, long waiting lists and substandard treatment — are starting to crack, however. Canadian newspapers are filled with stories of people frustrated by long delays for care. Many Canadians, determined to get the care they need, have begun looking not to lotteries — but to markets.”
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2007/07/27/canadian-doctor-describes-the-nightmare-of-canadas-health-care-system.php
For those who may read Peak’s post here, what he is citing for cancer survival is a time based study which is a flawed approach to determining the effectiveness of cancer treatments by country or region.
Here is what one author wrote from Science Based Medicine Cancer care in the U.S. versus Europe: Is more necessarily better?
That problem is embodied in three words: Lead time bias. Remember lead time bias? I’ve written about it enough times before, particularly in the context of discussing over-diagnosis and overtreatment. Basically, using the time from diagnosis to the time of death is not the correct way to analyze data like this. To explain why, a picture is worth a thousand words (not that it’ll stop me from writing a thousand words, as is my wont, because to me a picture plus a thousand words is equal to two thousand words).
I think, many Americans are in for a rude awakening from this on-going deep depression, Obamacare, and Baby-Boomers retiring (the last of the Baby-Boomers, born between 1946-64, will reach 65 in 2029).
Peak,
Per the Canadian experience with single payer, all the quotes are from an op-ed by one Canadian doctor with examples from 1997 and the op-ed is published 2007 with no links to the purported “research” supposedly helping to support broader generalizations.
The start goes like this:
“The information in his editorial contains the information Michael Moore doesn’t want Americans to know:”
Enough said about this editorial offered as ?something?
All things considered, Peak’s link may be the most “accurate” one he has ever posted.
Dan, here’s a rigorous study by the NBER:
Comparing the U.S. and Canadian Health Care Systems
http://www.nber.org/bah/fall07/w13429.html
An interesting point is near the end of the page:
“Finally, the authors examine whether Canada has a more equitable distribution of health outcomes, as might be expected in a single-payer system with universal coverage. To do so, they estimate the correlation across individuals in their personal income and personal health status and compare this for the two countries. Surprisingly, they find that the health-income gradient is actually more prominent in Canada than in the U.S.”
run75441, your article implies the efficacies of the huge wave of U.S. cancer drugs approved by the FDA, over the past 20 years, were worthless and the U.S. is better at screening for cancer.
http://www.medilexicon.com/drugs-list/cancer.php
Also, someone asserted the reason inflation in health care has been much lower is doctors and hospitals became much more efficient preparing for Obamacare.
However, there are other factors, e.g. the deep depression (i.e. Americans scaling back on health care), slowing increases in Medicare spending, many “blockbuster” drug patents expiring in 2011 and 2012, etc..
The CMS’ Office of the Actuary concluded “…the economic slowdown was largely responsible for the slow growth in health spending.”
Run75441; EXCELLENT link!
I have many Canadian friends that I see from time to time. They BRAG about their healthcare system. I’ve never been to Canada so I must take their word. My friends are “well off” and that may make a difference. The last that I talked to one of my friends was last spring. I asked about their healthcare and they said it didn’t cost them anything so I assume that wealth wasn’t a factor.
Gotta love a US-Canada comparison that admits it is
” Focusing on whites (to sidestep differences in the racial composition of the two populations and the problem of racial disparities in health outcomes)”
and then goes its merry way to a conclusion without any attempt whatsoever to account for 40% of Americans. I wonder what the waiting time for a knee replacement for a black man in Compton, CA is?
Course this ranks right up there with fighting the straw man of
“someone asserted the reason inflation in health care has been much lower is doctors and hospitals became much more efficient preparing for Obamacare”,
which I have not seen anyone who says the ACA is totally responsible for lower inflation, but then goes on to list other factors that everyone lists.
Humorously, these valid reasons include ” slowing increases in Medicare spending” and strangely enough does not credit the ACA for its obvious role in slowing that increase.(see readmission, etc.)
When people say the U.S. spends more on health care per capita than other countries, and cite a $2.9 trillion health care industry, they seem to ignore the fact that it includes much more research and development, more and better capital equipment, better clinics and hospitals, higher quality treatments, highly specialized doctors, etc..
The U.S. spends roughly $3,000 a year more per capita on health care than the average of developed OECD countries. Yet, U.S. per capita income is well over $10,000 a year more compared to those countries.
The WHO rated U.S. health care below Cuba, and yet stated the U.S. is #1 in the world in both labor (e.g. doctors, nurses, specialists, etc.) and in capital (e.g. hospitals, equipment, technology, etc.). I’m sure, the U.S. is also #1 in the world in in research and development, and in new therapies and drugs, which not only benefit the U.S., they benefit the rest of the world.
EMichael: Good point, I know that Native Americans here don’t get much of any modern healthcare and have short lifespans. I imagine Canada is just as bad toward First Nations, or worse.
Peak,
Can’t figure out that inequality thing, can you?
“more and better capital equipment, better clinics and hospitals, higher quality treatments, highly specialized doctors, etc.” –PT–
Florida Hospital in Orlando, FL is ranked nationally in 8 adult specialties. It was also high-performing in 4 adult specialties, as shown below. Florida Hospital is a 2,170-bed general medical and surgical facility with 122,729 admissions in the most recent year reported…..
Cardiology & Heart Surgery
Best Rank in This Specialty #32
http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/fl/florida-hospital-6390690
Charlene Dill didn’t have to die.
On March 21, Dill was supposed to bring her three children over to the South Orlando home of her best friend, Kathleen Voss Woolrich. The two had cultivated a close friendship since 2008; they shared all the resources that they had, from debit-card PINs to transportation to baby-sitting and house keys. They helped one another out, forming a safety net where there wasn’t one already. They “hustled,” as Woolrich describes it, picking up short-term work, going out to any event they could get free tickets to, living the high life on the low-down, cleaning houses for friends to afford tampons and shampoo. They were the working poor, and they existed in the shadows of the economic recovery that has yet to reach many average people.
So on March 21, when Dill never showed up with her three kids (who often came over to play with her 9-year-old daughter, Zahra), Woolrich was surprised she didn’t even get a phone call from Dill. She shot her a text message – something along the lines of “Thanks for ditching me, LOL” – not knowing what had actually happened. Dill, who was estranged from her husband and raising three children aged 3, 7 and 9 by herself, had picked up yet another odd job. She was selling vacuums on a commission basis for Rainbow Vacuums. On that day, in order to make enough money to survive, she made two last-minute appointments. At one of those appointments, in Kissimmee, she collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor.
Dill’s death was not unpredictable, nor was it unpreventable. She had a documented heart condition for which she took medication. But she also happened to be one of the people who fall within the gap created by the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of the Affordable Care Act’s intention to make health care available to everyone. In the ensuing two years, 23 states have refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida, which rejected $51 billion from the federal government over the period of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid program to include people like Dill and Woolrich – people who work, but do not make enough money to qualify for the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. They, like many, are victims of a political war – one that puts the lives and health of up to 17,000 U.S. residents and 2,000 Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the name of rebelling against President Barack Obama’s health care plan.
http://orlandoweekly.com/news/the-perils-of-florida-s-refusal-to-expand-medicaid-1.1665144