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Comment by judemelancon | Hacker News Reader

Do you have a source for US outcomes being better? http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/06... http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/the-state-of-us-...

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That was an interesting read, lots of good points. But I think that articles points are orthogonal to mine. I agree the US is a much less healthy place than many other industrialized countries. But that isn't a reflection on our health care industry, that's a cultural issue. If the US has a higher rate of breast cancer remission, but an even higher rate of breast cancer occurrence, that would reflect well on the health care system while resulting in a increased years of life lost.

You're doctor can't make you stop being fat, he can't make you jog, and he can't make you stop stressing about not jogging and being fat :P But in the US he can give you an edge over other countries in beating cancer.

It's an extremely tough problem to determine what is cultural causes, what is genetic, and what is health care. But just normalizing on age incidences, the US does well. I bet if we adjusted for relative health (impossible, but I'm wishing for perfect data), the US would do remarkably better.

If I have time later today, I'll dig up my sources. But I lost interest in this years ago when people overwhelmingly thought that because the US has a higher mortality rate, our health care system must suck :/

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