Americans spend more years being unhealthy than people in any other country
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I'm not sure I agree with that? I'd think intuitively the delta between years lived and "health span" would be largest in countries with good health care. The end of the article does allude to this.
>While the US presented the most extreme example, the researchers note that the global trends seem to present a "disease paradox whereby reduced acute mortality exposes survivors to an increased burden of chronic disease."
At a super high level, it has to do with how seed oils ("vegetable" oils, etc) are produced and how oxidative they are in the body.
Average lifespan is a terrible metric for quality of healthcare. There are dozens of confounding factors that can reduce lifespan even in the presence of high quality healthcare.
Child mortality is even worse. Not all countries count neonatal deaths the same. In many countries premature babies that die are "stillborn" and not counted.
In the US, very, very premature babies are resuscitated and if they pass away, are averaging "zero" into the stats. So in fact, aggressive medical care in neonates can actually make mortality measures worse.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4560894/
The popularity of the infant mortality indicator notwithstanding, international variations in birth registration laws and practices have the potential to bias comparisons of infant mortality. Problems can arise from differential registration of live births and stillbirths, especially births occurring at the borderline of viability (e.g., gestational age <22 weeks or a birth weight <500 grams, who typically do not survive the neonatal period), and/or their classification as stillbirths versus live births
In Utah, LDS males have a life expectancy of 77.3 versus 70 for non-LDS males. (LDS have higher income but only slightly.) I don’t think there’s any special Mormon healthcare system!
US healthcare is great if you’re in the top 50% of earners who have employer-sponsored healthcare and you can keep your job while you go through major care events. People like knowledge workers tend to fit this bill. Doesn’t hurt that they aren’t messing up their back doing construction or something.
Obviously the USA has a ton of excellent care available including some of the top technology, doctors, and hospitals in the world.
It’s not so great if you’re one of the double digit millions of people who have no health insurance at all. It’s not so great if you can’t afford anything except the yearly check-up.
Did you know that over 40% or people who get cancer in America lose their life savings within two years?
The people in your second demographic don't even get that.
They finally take unpaid time off work to see the doctor when they start pooping blood, and the doctor tells them to get their affairs in order in the few months they have left.
> And yet, in 2018, there were an estimated 280 deaths per 100,000 in Europe, compared to 189 per 100,000 in the United States, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
Basically, America has the best socialized healthcare in the world for cancer, but only if you’re older than 65. Cancer just happens to be an illness that is primarily affecting that age group.
Americans have to wait until age 65 to get socialized medicine, which is why the majority of Americans approve of expanding Medicare to all age groups.
And there’s also a huge gap in smoking rates with the US smoking far less which was discussed in the article you linked.
I would love to see a comparison on outcomes for people below 65 especially as it relates to medical bankruptcy and inequality of access to care.
I’m quite doubtful that affluent European countries have similar inequality levels that the US has with, e.g., the wide gap between infant mortality rates between Black and white women.
It’s hard to analyze. But people slightly under the age 65 line with private insurance (60-64), and those slightly over with Medicare + private insurance (65-69), have higher survival rates than those with Medicare alone (65-69). https://hollingscancercenter.musc.edu/news/archive/2021/05/1...
> I’m quite doubtful that affluent European countries have similar inequality levels that the US has with, e.g., the wide gap between infant mortality rates between Black and white women.
It’s even higher outside the U.S. In the Uk, the black infant mortality rate in the UK is 3x the white rate, versus 2x in the U.S. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/nov/09/b...
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/black-infant-mortality-rate-do...
France would be the other Western European country with a large black population, but they don’t allow collecting racial statistics.
I personally know someone who lost everything caring for their (very young) spouse who died of cancer. They had insurance.
What percentage of people who get cancer have to leave their jobs as a result? What’s the corresponding statistic in other countries?
It also takes no time at all to get an appointment. I take my kids to the pediatrician for basically nothing. My 5 year old ran face first into the edge of a table. The pediatrician saw him an hour later, authorized a CT scan, and we got the images and the doctor reviewed them an hour or two after that.
I haven't actually had issues with wait time but with actual quality of care. I'm by no means a medical expert, but on at least two recent occasions I had to be the one pointing out factors to the doctor when my father in law had a kidney stone then gall bladder issues. Specifically, the doctor simply forgot about the gall issues an hour later and was pointing back to another potential kidney stone.
Its been a while since I've had to schedule a doctor's appointment, but anecdotally I hear it is pretty slow. After the stones my father in law had an annual checkup and was referred to a cardiologist, the fastest they could book was 2 months out though that was for a check without immediate symptoms which would play a factor.
Once at the hospital I haven't seen issues getting specific tests run, like a CT scan for example. Here it does seem like they have the bandwidth for that kind of stuff once you're in the door.
Some more earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42393837
In the US, with private health care, the incentives are the opposite.
Each has pros and cons, but there is definitely nothing to suggest that this demonstrates worse health care in US.
The vast majority of people live in places where they have to live almost their entire lives in their cars.
If you’re in the privileged minority of Americans who live in a walkable pre-automobile city, you’ve probably experienced your friends and family from out of town acting like walking 4 miles a day is a lot.
When they visit they’ll timidly ask about how we are getting to our next destination because the there is anxiety about how to figure out navigating life where not every physical destination involves a car. You’ll have to remind them to bring things like adequate outerwear, hats, raincoats, gloves, because they just let their car handle that for them.
Most of the somewhat bad car-focused cities in other countries still do better than America on this issue. America is the land of the couch on wheels. It literally is Wall-E already.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/11/17/u-s-lifespans-trail-tha...