A research group reviewed each country’s residents’ probability of dying from a non-communicable disease (including, but not limited to cancers; cardiovascular diseases; diabetes; endocrine, blood, and immune disorders; non-infectious respiratory, digestive, and genitourinary diseases; neurological conditions; mental and substance use disorders; congenital anomalies; and sense organ, skin, musculoskeletal, and oral or dental conditions) at 2001, 2010, and 2019. When looking at the probability of dying from a non-communicable disease between birth and age 80 in 2019, here are the top five performers by gender, along with America, Canada and England: For females For males “the poor performance of the USA … Read More
All posts in International Comparisons
More than a thousand dentists have set up shop in Los Algodones. Their patients are mostly Americans who can’t afford the U.S.’s dental care. “According to Roberto Díaz and Paula Hahn, who run a website about medical tourism called Border CRxing, Los Algodones now has the highest per-capita concentration of dentists in the world: well over a thousand in a population of fifty-five hundred. It’s known as Molar City. [..] technology has its downsides. The more advanced the imaging system, the more expensive the visit, and the more problems it can find with your teeth. Last year, at a routine … Read More
Excerpt – The global total fertility rate has more than halved since 1950, with those of most countries already below replacement level. The population pyramid is increasingly inverted, not just in the wealthiest Western nations but also in most places outside Africa. [..] If birthrates do not recover — and at present, they show no real signs of doing so — eventually we will be forced to revert to the system that prevailed for all of human history up until recently: Older people will be cared for privately, typically by their children and grandchildren, and those without families will have to rely … Read More
“[Introduction] Despite spending more than any country in the world on health care, life expectancy in the US is comparably worse than that of most other high-income countries and declining both in absolute value and relative rank. However, life expectancy across US states varies just as markedly as it does across high-income countries, from 81.8 years in Hawaiʻi to 74.7 years in Mississippi in 2019—a divergence that has been increasing over time. US states vary considerably on policy decisions related to the spending, regulation, and provision of health care; reproductive health; tax policy; social welfare programs; and in relation to … Read More
“In 1990, it was hypothesized that humanity was approaching an upper limit to life expectancy (the limited lifespan hypothesis) in long-lived populations, as early gains from improved public health and medical care had largely been accomplished, leaving biological aging as the primary risk factor for disease and death; the rate of improvement in life expectancy was projected to decelerate in the twenty-first century; and e(0) [life expectancy at birth] for national populations would not likely exceed approximately 85 years (88 for females and 82 for males) unless an intervention in biological aging was discovered, tested for safety and efficacy and broadly … Read More
Excerpt – “Crisis,” “collapse,” “catastrophe” — these are common descriptors from recent headlines about the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. In 2022, the NHS was supposed to begin its recovery from being perceived as a Covid-and-emergencies-only service during parts of 2020 and 2021. [..] In the background of this acute [COVID] crisis, waiting lists for specialist consultation have been growing and now exceed 7 million patients (in a country of 66 million people), up from 4.4 million before the pandemic. There is substantial consensus about the causes of these crises, though different experts weight the contributory factors … Read More
“[Introduction] [..] Privileged US citizens—including thought and physician leaders—may tolerate this underperformance as applying to “others,” dismissing comparisons as mean values that do not reflect the quality of their own personal care. Privileged US citizens believe that their social connections and financial resources allow them to choose the best physicians and hospitals for their own care, thereby ensuring excellent health outcomes. One study showed that the wealthiest quintile receive 43% more health care than the poorest quintile and 23% more than middle-income US citizens. Privileged US citizens may believe that their resources ensure that they receive the world’s best health … Read More
“Recent legislative proposals, including US Senate Bill S.2543, US House of Representatives Bill HR 3, and various Trump Administration proposals and plans, have advanced some form of international reference pricing (IRP) to lower drug prices. As its name suggests, IRP seeks to benchmark US drug prices to prices of similar or comparable drugs in other counties. Some proposals would have the federal government develop a reference price index based on prices paid by a select group of high-income countries, and then restrict prices to a narrow range of the index. [..] American drug pricing policy rewards large capital investments and … Read More
“In most countries with universal health insurance, physicians are paid on a fee-for-service basis, yet prices there are lower than in the US. As Miriam Laugesen and Sherry Glied explain, “Higher fees, rather than higher practice costs, volumes, or tuition expenses, are the main driver of higher US spending.” Among US policy makers, the response has been to focus on market competition, managed care, price transparency, and performance measurement. This response is grounded in the view that fee-for-service private practice and third-party payment saddle the health system with perverse financial incentives. Beginning in the 1970s, managed care emerged as a … Read More