Reply to Which country actually has the best healthcare system?

Forum Index » Health and Medicine

Reply to "Which country actually has the best healthcare system?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]By what metric?

In the US, the people who have access to low out of pocket cost healthcare or have significant financial means have the best healthcare in the world.  It’s honestly not even close.  I’ve worked with health systems all over Western Europe and the only thing they have us beat on is access.  Try getting cutting edge cancer care, or top of the line joint replacement, or extremely technical neurosurgery after head trauma.  Some of this is available but it’s not nearly as ubiquitous as it is in the U.S.

Sure, you don’t go bankrupt over medical bills but if your metric is just overall “best” the US can’t be beat.

Our costs are higher because of 1. Consumption, 2. Doctor pay, 3. Obesity
[/quote]

"Generally, the U.S. performs worse in long-term health outcomes measures (such as life expectancy), certain treatment outcomes (such as maternal mortality and congestive heart failure hospital admissions), some patient safety measures (such as obstetric trauma with instrument and medication or treatment errors), and patient experiences of not getting care due to cost. The U.S. performs similarly to or better than peer nations in some other measures of treatment outcomes (such as mortality rates within 30 days of acute hospital treatment) and patient safety (such as rates of post-operative sepsis).

Across a wide variety of measures of quality, the U.S. health system appears to perform worse than peer nations on more indicators than it does better."

*Life expectancy at birth was similar in the U.S. and peer countries on average in 1980 (73.7 and 74.6 years, respectively), but the gap has grown substantially in the following decades as peer nations saw more rapid improvement in life expectancy.

*From 1980 to 2021, all-cause mortality rates — the number of deaths per 100,000 people, adjusted for age differences across countries — fell by about 17%, compared to a 44% decline in peer countries.

*The “years of life lost” metric marks the extent of premature deaths within a population by providing more weight to deaths at younger ages. The U.S. had the highest per capita rate of years of life lost among similarly large and wealthy countries in 2020 and 2021. The per capita premature excess death rate in the U.S. was over twice as high as the next closest peer country, the U.K.

*The 30-day mortality rates after hospital admissions for heart attacks (acute myocardial infarction) and hemorrhagic stroke (caused by bleeding) are similar in the U.S. and comparable countries average. The 30-day mortality rates for ischemic strokes (caused by blood clots) was 4.3 deaths per 100 patients in the U.S. in 2020, compared to an average of 6.2 deaths per 100 patients in similar countries.

*The U.S. is an outlier with the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths (22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022) when compared to peer countries (3.9 deaths per 100,000 live births).

*Rates of post-operative complications are an important measure of hospital safety. Pulmonary embolisms and deep vein thrombosis can arise as complications from surgeries or extended hospital stays. The prevalence of post-operative clots for these procedures is higher in the U.S. than in the U.K., Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands, but lower than in Australia.

*Post-operative sepsis is less common in the U.S. than in most peer countries.

Source: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics