U.S. health care doesn’t suck

Dr. Scott Atlas, M.D., a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor at the Stanford University Medical Center, says the growing acceptance for a larger government role in the health care system requires an acceptance that the system is broken.

“Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government role in health care,” Atlas notes. “Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex.  However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America’s health care system should be considered.”

Atlas’ 10 surprising facts about American health care:
• Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52% higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88% higher in the United Kingdom.

• Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality is 9% higher, prostate cancer is 184% higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10% higher than in the United States.

• Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries. Some 56% of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36% of the Dutch, 29% of the Swiss, 26% of Germans, 23% of Britons and 17% of Italians receive them.

• Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. For example, Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89%) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72%). More than half of American men (54%) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16%).

• Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7% versus 5.8%).

• Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K.  Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long — sometimes more than a year — to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.

• People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed.  More than 70% of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding."

• Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the "health care system," more than half of Americans (51.3%) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5% of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8%) than Canadians (8.5%).

• Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K.

• Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country. Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize.

“Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries,” Atlas noted in his conclusion.