America's Health Care Compares Poorly

America suffers far more Years of Potential Life Lost for several disease categories than do other developed countries that provide universal coverage for their populations.  The years of potential life lost calculation considers the age at death, so more potential years of life are lost when a 20-year-old dies from any cause than when a 74-year-old dies from the same cause.

Gerard F. Anderson, Ph.D., and Patricia Markovich, Johns Hopkins researchers, have compared the performance of several nations' health systems in a report supported by The Commonwealth Fund, entitled Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data, 2008. Their research shows that the United States health system performed best in its treatment of malignant neoplasms (cancer) as you'll see in the following graph.  

While this was the best performance of the America's health system, we still ranked in the bottom half of the eight countries compared, with four countries suffering fewer potential years of life lost per 100,000 people, and three countries suffering more potential years of life lost per 100,000.   France, which has the world's top rated health sytem, turned in the worst performance of the eight countries compared.  (Click to enlarge graph.)

As I discussed here, America ranks last among eight nations in the potential years of life lost due to diabetes.  The United States' suffered nearly four times more potential years of life lost per 100,000 as did France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.  America suffered about 50 percent more potential years of life lost per 100,000 than the next worst performing country -- New Zealand.

Tomorrow, we'll look at how the United States compared with other countries in potential years of life lost to circulatory and respiratory diseases.