"France best, U.S. worst in preventable death ranking"

[Prada]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...BrandChannel=0
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

If the U.S. health care system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.

Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.

They called such deaths an important way to gauge the performance of a country's health care system.

Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health insurance -- about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million, according to U.S. government estimates -- probably was a key factor in the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized nations in the study.

"I wouldn't say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don't, I think that's the main problem, isn't it?" Nolte said in a telephone interview.

In establishing their rankings, the researchers considered deaths before age 75 from numerous causes, including heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, certain bacterial infections and complications of common surgical procedures.

Such deaths accounted for 23 percent of overall deaths in men and 32 percent of deaths in women, the researchers said

France did best -- with 64.8 deaths deemed preventable by timely and effective health care per 100,000 people, in the study period of 2002 and 2003. Japan had 71.2 and Australia had 71.3 such deaths per 100,000 people. The United States had 109.7 such deaths per 100,000 people, the researchers said.

After the top three, Spain was fourth best, followed in order by Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Austria, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Britain, Ireland and Portugal, with the United States last.

PREVIOUS RANKINGS

The researchers compared these rankings with rankings for the same 19 countries covering the period of 1997 and 1998. France and Japan also were first and second in those rankings, while the United States was 15th, meaning it fell four places in the latest rankings.

All the countries made progress in reducing preventable deaths from these earlier rankings, the researchers said. These types of deaths dropped by an average of 16 percent for the nations in the study, but the U.S. decline was only 4 percent.

The research was backed by the Commonwealth Fund, a private New York-based health policy foundation.

"It is startling to see the U.S. falling even farther behind on this crucial indicator of health system performance," Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen said.

"The fact that other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less, indicates that policy, goals and efforts to improve health systems make a difference," Schoen added in a statement.

[RA]

hmm, I wonder what their agenda could be? Ill keep my healthcare just as it is thanks.

[Logan13]

hmm, I wonder what their agenda could be? Ill keep my healthcare just as it is thanks.

exactly. No issues with my healthcare.

[Tock]

More French Kissing, of course.

[Coop77]

hmm, I wonder what their agenda could be? Ill keep my healthcare just as it is thanks.

Whose agenda? the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine?

[Coop77]

exactly. No issues with my healthcare.

I know of 101,000 people that would probably disagree with you guys. See second paragraph.

[qualityclrk1]

I know of 101,000 people that would probably disagree with you guys. See second paragraph.

don't forget about their family....so that'll bump that number of disagreements up substantially

[Logan13]

I tend to have a problem with a story that sights a study, yet fails to submit a link to said study. I can't even find the actual study on the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine website..........
If our healthcare system were as bad as it is made out to be, you would read stories in your local newspaper daily about individuals being turned away from hospitals and emergency rooms because they do not have insurance.

[Coop77]

I tend to have a problem with a story that sights a study, yet fails to submit a link to said study. I can't even find the actual study on the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine website..........
If our healthcare system were as bad as it is made out to be, you would read stories in your local newspaper daily about individuals being turned away from hospitals and emergency rooms because they do not have insurance.

I think that's probably so common it's not really newsworthy. Here in LA a woman's family had to call 911 from the ER waiting room to get an ambulance to take her to another hospital, then she died on the floor of the waiting room.

[Logan13]

I think that's probably so common it's not really newsworthy. Here in LA a woman's family had to call 911 from the ER waiting room to get an ambulance to take her to another hospital, then she died on the floor of the waiting room.

As much as the left is trying to push socialized medicine down our throats (replacing the term socialized with universal), were it occurring with as much frequency as you report, it sure as hell would be in the daily newspapers. Again, I still can not find the actual study.......

[thegodfather]

There are actually American citizens posting in this thread who advocate these abhorrent Socialist communistic policies?

[Prada]

Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health insurance -- about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million, according to U.S. government estimates -- probably was a key factor in the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized nations in the study.

This is a substantial amount of people. Even worrisome.

"I wouldn't say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don't, I think that's the main problem, isn't it?" Nolte said in a telephone interview.

[Logan13]

This is a substantial amount of people. Even worrisome.

This number that everyone keeps reciting as fact comes from Michael Moore's movie "Sicko"........
Let's break it down:

http://www.businessandmedia.org/prin...718153509.aspx

- The number of the uninsured who aren’t citizens is nearly 10 million on its own, invalidating all the claims of 40+ million “Americans” without health insurance.
- according to the Census report, there are 8.3 million uninsured people who make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 8.74 million who make more than $75,000 a year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to “afford” health insurance because they make substantially more than the median household income of $46,326.
- Subtracting non-citizens and those who can afford their own insurance but choose not to purchase it, about 20 million people are left – less than 7 percent of the population.
- “45 percent of the uninsured are going to have insurance within four months [according to the Congressional Budget Office],” because many are transitioning between jobs and most people get health insurance through their employers.
- So what is the true extent of the uninsured “crisis?” The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit frequently quoted by the media, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million. That is a much smaller figure than the media report.
- Kaiser’s 8.2 million figure for the chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more. It is also worth noting, that, 45 percent of uninsured people will be uninsured for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Dome and gloom is an easy sell............

[Coop77]

There are actually American citizens posting in this thread who advocate these abhorrent Socialist communistic policies?

Some Americans would prefer to not be dead last in health care when compared to socialist communist Canada or Australia.

[MuscleScience]

This reports conclusions are way off. 2/3 rds of all deaths in the US are directly contributed to lifestyle habits. Its not because we lack good medical care we lack an effective system that focuses on treating symptoms instead of what is causing the disease. He have a reactive health care culture and not a proactive one. People expect to go to the doctor and get a quick fix and do no work of their own to maintain there health. As far as social medicine we already have it. If anyone has ever studied medical cost structures one would see that the cost of procedures and treatments has a factor figured in for those said cost with the amount of people the hospital treats that cant pay. So everytime you go to the doctor you pay for part of someone elses bill that cant pay. The payers pay something like 90% of the medical cost of those that can pay.

Socialized medicine sounds like a good idea but when you weight the pro's and con's associated with it. There are many pitfalls of it that need to be addressed before it can ever be implemented in the US.