Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by albert180 852 days ago
If Access to Health Care in the US is so great, why is infant mortality worse than in Cuba and they score dead last in every Health or Life Expectancy Metric among the G7?
4 comments

None of these are primarily medical outcomes. Life expectancy, for example, is skewed by an anomalously high rate of fatal injuries when people are young, which has nothing to do with healthcare quality. For better or worse, trauma medicine in the US is arguably the best in the world because serious injuries are so prevalent.

There is also the practical matter that the US is a continent-sized country and regional effects matter. Some US States have life expectancy on par with the best European countries despite the anomalously high fatal injury rates among young people.

Uhm no, even the richest households are worse off than the poorest in UK https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774...
Nothing in that article actually addresses the point. The average life expectancy where I live is currently 83+, despite notably higher fatal injury rates.

In terms of actual medical outcomes -- survival rates for cancer, cardiovascular events, trauma medicine, etc -- the UK is quite a bit worse than the US. The only countries that stand out as consistently competing on medical outcomes are France and Switzerland.

Nope, even the richest Americans don't get better health outcomes than the richer European countries https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
In case you haven't noticed, the demographics of America have changed a little bit since 1990.

We also have a small problem with fentanyl.

Have you seen the health of an average American?
It's a little more subtle than this, and of course subtlety is doesn't play well these days, but the US stats vary greatly across geography and ethnic lines. Cuba isn't a great comparison, beyond the shock of "they're worse than a bunch of commies!"