US Healthcare vs the rest of the world

BrklynLiberal

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu May-10-07 07:40 PM
Original message

US Healthcare vs the rest of the world

<snip>

First let’s take a look at the very young. How well does the US health care system take care of children and mothers, both before and after birth? The following table gives a few indicators:
______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________
Notes: Infant mortality rates from OECD, showing 2001 data; other data from the WHO, showing data for the year 2000.

The US does worst, or tied for worst, in every measure. The US health care system simply does not do a very good job in caring for the very young.

So how about the elderly? The following table gives details about the length and quality of life that senior citizens can receive in developed countries around the world.

_________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________
Note: Data from year 2001. Source: WHO.

Not only is the US’s life expectancy at or near the bottom of the industrialized world, but Americans spend more of their shorter lives in poor health (as defined by the WHO).
<snip>

http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2005/04/performance-of-us-health-care-system.html

<snip>

Meanwhile, according to author Terry Boychuk, the rest of the industrialized world, including many developing countries like Mexico, Korea, and India, viscerally understood that "private insurance would cover all necessary hospital procedures and services; and that even minimal protection beyond the reach of the poor, the working poor, and those with the most serious health problems." 1 Today, over half the family bankruptcies filed every year in the United States are directly related to medical expenses, and a recent study shows that 75 percent of those are filed by people with health insurance.2

The United States spends far more per capita on health care than any comparable country. In fact, the gap is so enormous that a recent University of California, San Francisco, study estimates that the United States would save over $161 billion every year in paperwork alone if it switched to a singlepayer system like Canada’s.3 These billions of dollars are not abstract amounts deducted from government budgets; they come directly out of the pockets of people who are sick.

The year 2000 marked the beginning of a crucial period, when international trade rules, economic theory, and political action had begun to fully reflect the belief in the superiority of private, as opposed to public, management, especially in the United States. By that year the U.S. health care system had undergone what has been called "the health management organization revolution." U.S. government figures show that medical care costs have spiked since 2000, with total spending on prescriptions nearly doubling. 4
<snip>