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Comment by david_l_lin | Hacker News Reader

> Findings of this study suggest that the US expenditure on cancer care may not be commensurate with improved cancer outcomes.

Well yeah, the cost of healthcare in the US is astronomical. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

This would be the same across diseases, not just cancer.

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Since we spend twice as much as anyone else on healthcare but rank somewhere around 50th in lifespan, it would be weird if we were getting better outcomes in any area due to greater spending.

The average lifespan numbers are rigged. Most countries don’t count an infant delivered alive but terminal in their infant mortality numbers. Like when a placenta ruptures and you have an emergency birth before 28 or 30 weeks. Those don’t count in most if not all of Europe.

In the US, every live birth counts, even if it only lasts minutes

I don’t know if that completely makes up the difference, but the real disparity is nowhere near the numbers that get thrown around. It’s apples vs oranges.

Covid positives were a similar situation.

Most countries would not report a positive Covid patient unless the test was positive and the patient was symptomatic.

Data collection differences are well-known to the people who produce cross-country numbers. Further, your specific observation about when births are counted in the US is flat wrong. We have 54 ways of doing things. Furthermore, not everything is a conspiracy. Reasonable people do things differently. To suggest these numbers are rigged is glib.

>I don’t know if that completely makes up the difference, but the real disparity is nowhere near the numbers that get thrown around. It’s apples vs oranges.

The CDC[2020] reports an infant mortality rate of <0.6%. Excluding all of it would only increase life expectancy from 78.8 to 79.2

[2020]https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm

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