January 08, 2008

Study: U.S. Lags Industrialized Nations In Preventable Deaths

When the Republican candidates for president met Saturday for one of their final debates before today's New Hampshire primary, there was one point on which all six of them seemed to agree -- America has "the best health care system in the world."

While the Democrats have spent much time and energy proposing sweeping reforms to increase access for the 47 million uninsured Americans, the Republicans have been warning that a move to "socialized medicine" -- which is how they characterize the government-run systems of most other industrialized nations -- would compromise the quality of care. For example, Rudy Giuliani asserted in a radio ad that, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, his chances of survival in the U.S. were nearly double what they would have been in England "under socialized medicine."

Those figures were later disputed by some experts, but in the end his point about disease treatment may be irrelevant. As Mike Huckabee pointed out in the debate, "What we have in America is a health care maze. It's built on the idea that we wait until people are so desperately ill that the cost to try to fix them is catastrophic and out of control."

A new study published in the policy journal Health Affairs seems to echo Huckabee's concerns. In the study, the United States came in dead last among 19 leading industrialized nations in preventable deaths. The researchers based their analysis, which placed France, Japan and Australia at the top of the heap, on the number of deaths that "could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care," Reuters reports.

"If the United States could reduce amenable mortality to the average rate achieved in the three top-performing countries, there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths per year by the end of the study period," concluded Ellen Nolte and C. Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Their assessment was based on the rate of decline in these types of deaths among people under the age of 75 between two periods, 1997-98 and 2002-03. During that time, the U.S. rate of preventable deaths fell just 4 percent, compared with 16 percent for the top-performing countries.

"It is difficult to disregard the observation that the slow decline in U.S. amenable mortality has coincided with an increase in the uninsured population, an issue that is now receiving renewed attention in several states and among presidential candidates from both parties," the researchers said in a statement.

In an interview with Reuters, Nolte elaborated, "I wouldn't say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don't, I think that's the main problem, isn't it?"

National Journal sized up the health care plans of the 2008 White House candidates back in October. Read the results here.

Posted at 3:58 PM
Posted to: Campaigns, Democrats, Health, Mike Huckabee, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, WH 2008
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