[disabled]

The third leading cause of death in the United States is believed to be preventable medical errors.

Anyways, I have never been pregnant, but if you saw what happened to me medically this summer, you would be doing everything you could to be leaving the US. Anyways, I am a dual citizen. My other nationality is Croatian, but I don’t plan on living there.

Even Croatia, you know which went through a horrific war 30 years ago, has a better life expectancy than the US now. But even before the pandemic, they were very close to convergence with the US life expectancy. And Croatia only spends $1,100 on healthcare per citizen per year!!!

[xyzzyz]

I imagine life expectancy in Croatia would be much worse than in US if Croatians were as overweight as Americans are, and used hard drugs or lived on the streets as often. Fortunately, Croatians tend to live much healthier lifestyles than Americans, which results in higher life expectancy, despite available medical care being of worse quality.

[disabled]

Thanks captain obvious, what you stated are public health issues. Also, money isn’t everything and unfortunately a lot of Americans use that as justification to keep playing a game that is going to kill them and/or their family member. Way too much is spent on administration of health care plans and nobody is getting good value for their money. We spend the most, and we get the worst outcomes overall of any developed country. Even things we used to excel at we are doing very poorly due to staffing, regulation, and other issues.

Honestly, the quality of care is not OK at all in the US. Just check out r/medicine and r/nursing. We are in for a whole lot of really terrible stuff.

Seriously, if someone in your immediate family gets sick and needs to be hospitalized, stay with them 24/7, even if it means sleeping on the floor. Nurses say they will do the same thing for their family members.

Anyways, I ended up spending 9 weeks in the hospital this summer. It started at a trauma hospital, where I stayed for 18 days. The first 90 hours (3.5 days) they did not even give me any long acting insulin, even though my body does not produce any insulin and I can not metabolize without long acting basal insulin. (I was never on an insulin drip either, and I was never on a high dependency unit where the insulin drip could occur.) My family had to beg and plead with them to give me basic diabetes care, including the long-acting insulin. (I was too, the whole entire time.)

The first week my blood sugars averaged overall around 400 mg/dL (22 mmol/L), and chief trauma resident and trauma fellow were explaining to trauma residents outside of my room when someone with type 1 diabetes is at risk of diabetic ketoacidosis. Such a basic matter.

Anyways the rest of the story is for another time.

[xyzzyz]

I will only say that I come from one of those Eastern European countries with low per capita medical spend and pretty good health outcomes, and comparing the actual quality of received healthcare, and ignoring the cost differential, I’d pick American hospitals over those in the country I grew up in every single time, no exceptions.

[disabled]

Yeah, your writing sounds eastern European, if you know what I mean (no offense).

You’re right about the American hospital, generally and for now. They have better resources, equipment, and are cleaner, among many other things. You have more rights in an American hospital (no bribe expected).

But, a country like the United States could learn from a country like Croatia and make the best out of its resources. The US could spend the same on healthcare without taking away resources from the general American populace (minus oligarchs) and allow people to be so much more healthier.

[xyzzyz]

I totally agree. Healthcare in US has a lot of problems, but the standards of care is not one of them. This means that comparing US healthcare based on outcomes does not always make sense. For example, mothers in postpartum overdosing on recreational drugs is simply not something that ever happens in Poland.

The fundamental problem is that a lot of Americans lead very unhealthy lifestyles, and this is reflected in the outcomes and the medical spend, despite world class medical care doing its best.

[CodesInChaos]

What makes a medical error "preventable"?

[ghufran_syed]

When reading anything about medical error, it's important to try and distinguish between ex-ante and post-hoc analysis of what is preventable. Everyone can be a great coach after the "game" has finished