Slashdot Mirror
Americans Less Healthy, But Outlive Brits
An anonymous reader writes with this intriguing snippet: "Older Americans are less healthy than their English counterparts, but they live as long or even longer than their English peers, according to a new study by researchers from the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London. Researchers found that while Americans aged 55 to 64 have higher rates of chronic diseases than their peers in England, they died at about the same rate. And Americans age 65 and older — while still sicker than their English peers — had a lower death rate than similar people in England, according to findings published in the journal Demography."
The summary is misleading. Brits, on average, outlive Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
This study compares the survival of people with similar diseases once they become ill.
Also, the British thinktank who instituted this are a right-wing one, no doubt plotting to destroy the NHS alongside the Tory allies. So they publish a non-peer reviewed piece of 'research' designed to conclude what they want it to conclude. Bullshit.
The Tories recently gutted NICE, the body that evaluates the cost effectiveness of drugs to see if they should be made available on the NHS. They were doing a fine job, but got nothing but shit because they prevented pharmaceutical companies gouging into the state healthcare providers ample budget. When retards in the US talk about 'death panels' they are usually referring to these guys, and they don't get much of a good press in the UK either.
Basically, they talked to terminal patients to find out how much of their life they would be willing to give up to remain in good health for the rest of their life, and used this to calibrate a 'quality adjusted life year' which represented the value of a drug. Thus they could reject a hugely overpriced drug that added 2 weeks to the life of a late-stage cancer patient and spend the money saved on a drug that might allow a very sick child to reach adulthood. That second part *never* got a mention by the rightwing critics. When opportunity costs are being used to make the state healthcare system more efficient whilst forcing drug companies to charge realistic prices based on what their products can actually do, the right suddenly decides to reject economic language and talk shit about 'death panels' and NICE 'killing patients'.
Yes, we ration healthcare in this country - but up until now it has been based on how much extra life (across the whole population) that healthcare can give. The US rations healthcare too - based on how rich or poor you are. Our system is, frankly, better.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Canadian life expectancy = 80.3 years, UK ife expectancy = 78.7 years, and US life expectancy = 78.0 years (in 2007) according to http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html and that's because Canada and the UK have life-long public health care.
But when medicare starts to cover US citizens at age 65, suddenly US citizens have a much better outlook. US citizens lucky enough to survive until age 65 and receive medicare coverage have a longer life expectancy than their British peers.
Actually, if you go back and study the data at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004393.html and http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/33/38979719.pdf you'll discover that the US has both higher infant mortality and lower life expectancy than Canada and almost every developed European democracy (even Germany who absorbed the disaster known as East Germany a few decades back). For what its worth, the US also pays much more per capita for their lower life expectancies. I wonder if this data would change anyone's mind about the benefits of health care reform...
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
TFA is consistent with the observation that 90% of American health care dollars are spent during the last few months of the patient's life.
If USA health care invested more money in early and preventive treatment, people might not live any longer, but they would be in better health until old age problems caught up with them. That is clear from TFA when viewed within the context of the differences between USA and UK health care delivery systems.
But USA health care is profit oriented, and there is more profit to be made in selling cures and disease treatments than there is in preventing diseases. Not only does preventive health care lack as much opportunity for profit, it reduces the market for such money makers as AIDS drugs, cancer therapies, antihypertensive agents, and antidepressants.
The USA needs a major reform of health care. Even if the recent legislation is put fully into effect, it won't go far enough; it will be band aid approach to broken bones. There needs to be a break-up of the current system. Prohibiting the sale of health insurance for profit would be a good place to start.
Will