The United States needs to see the doctor
(The Washington Post) - January has turned out to be a banner month for fans of American exceptionalism. As documented in voluminous detail in a 404-page report released last week by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, Americans lead shorter lives than Western Europeans, Australians, Japanese and Canadians. Of the 17 countries measured, the United States placed dead last in life expectancy, even though we lead the planet in the amount we spend on health care (17.6 percent of gross domestic product in 2010 vs. 11.6 percent each for France and Germany). We get radically less bang for the buck than comparable nations. If that’s not exceptionalism, I don’t know what is.
Americans die young. The death rate for Americans younger than 50, the report showed, is almost off the comparative charts.
The Myth of 'Free-Market' American Health Care
Commentary from Avik S. A. Roy
The Atlantic: Earlier this week, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry posted a stimulating comparison between the American and French health-care systems. “From my outlook,” he writes, “there’s something that I haven’t seen discussed and yet seems striking to me: how similar the French and U.S. healthcare systems are. On its face, this seems like a preposterous notion: whenever the two are mentioned together, it’s to say that they’re polar opposites.”
Indeed, there are a lot of misconceptions about how America’s health-care system compares to those of the other developed countries, including France.