I remember reading this article in public health school. Most of my peers wrote the paper off as a sham.
Among thirteen countries including Japan, Sweden, France and Canada, the U.S. was ranked 12th, based on the measurement of 16 health indicators such as life expectancy, low-birth-weight averages and infant mortality.
Unfortunately this isn't a fair comparison because the US has the most heterogeneous population of any industrialized nation. This creates serious health care issues that other countries need not deal with. If anyone has even dipped their feet into culturally competency in health care, you'll know why its so hard to delivery health care effectively in the US. Many of the healthiest nations also happen to be the most homogeneous. That isn't an artifact.
Thus, America's healthcare-system-induced deaths are the third leading cause of the death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer.
Unfortunately this paper fails to point out that america's health care system is the leading SAVER of lives. The author should have used a life saved to accidental death ratio to properly judge the competence of US health care professionals. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of epidemiology knows how useless gross numbers are in comparison to ratios. Moreover, most deaths are multifactorial, so I would take the numbers quoted with a grain of salt.
Unlike the U.S., Japan has the healthiest population among the industrialized nations. Instead of relying on sophisticated technology and professional personnel for medical treatment as in the U.S., Japan uses its technology solely for diagnostic purposes. Furthermore, in Japan, family members, rather than hospital staff, are involved in caring for the patients.
What is the causal link between techonlogy use and health status, or the casual link between family care of patients and health outcomes? This smells strongly of confounding to me.
40 million people in the U.S. do not have access to healthcare. The social and economic inequalities that are an integral part of American society are mirrored in the inequality of access to the health care system. Essentially, families of low socioeconomic status are cut off from receiving a decent level of health care.
Again, grossly misusing the numbers. Half of the uninsured are very healthy young persons that opt not to have insurance. Insurance through employers is often OPTIONAL, and young persons that feel they wont get ill more often than not choose NOT to use it. Check the numbers, you'll be suprised. Using 40 million essentially doubles what the actual "needy" uninsured is. The fact also remains that nearly every american under the age of 18 qualifies for health care under various goverment programs. In addition, Medicaid certainly provides quality health care to a large number of families in low SES. The uninsured is a problem, but its not as big as the author makes it out to seem.
Bottomline, our health care system is nowhere near perfect. We spend too much money to help too few people, but its is still by far the most advanced and reknowned in the world. If you get sick, there is no better place to get treated than in the good ol' US of A. Its no coincidence that people come to the US from all over the world to get special procedures done that they otherwise would not have access too. Ask any canadian about the lines they have to wait for certain procedures, and the US system looks a little bit better. Sure, we need to fix a lot of things, but to call the US system a failure is purely alarmist.
