"When Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi needed heart surgery, he didn't go to an Italian hospital…He had his surgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio," Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote two years ago in USA Today. He is only one of scores of foreign politicians and notables who have trekked to the U.S. for care. Why? Because "the U.S. health care system still provides the highest quality care in the world," he wrote.
In March, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alaska Republican, said "Obamacare is destroying the 'greatest health care system the world has ever known.'" During the last presidential election, House Speaker John Boehner said the U.S. has "the best health care delivery system in the world," an assessment that PolitiFact rated half-true.
Now, a new report that Ron Winslow of The Wall Street Journal describes as "the most comprehensive analysis of the health of the U.S. population in more than 15 years" finds that Americans are living longer but "losing ground on key measures of health to people in other developed nations."
Americans are living longer, but "not necessarily in good health," he reports. He quotes Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, who, in an editorial accompanying the new report, wrote:
Despite a level of health expenditures that would have seemed unthinkable a generation ago, the health of the U.S. population has improved only gradually and has fallen behind the pace of progress in many other wealthy nations.
CBS News reported that "compared to 34 similar countries, the U.S. ranked 27th for its mortality rate, life expectancy, and risk of dying from dietary factors." Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters wrote, "Although Americans are living longer, with overall U.S. life expectancy increasing to 78.2 in 2010 from 75.2 in 1990, increases in psychiatric disorders, substance abuse and conditions that cause back, muscle and joint pain mean many do not feel well enough to enjoy those added years of life." Patricia Sullivan of The Washington Post focused on Americans' bad habits, writing "Life expectancy in the United States is going up, but chronic disabilities, including many caused by bad food choices, smoking, obesity, physical inactivity and alcohol abuse, account for a larger portion of health issues in the United States than in its economic peers around the world."
Does the U.S. have the greatest healthcare system in the world? Let's just say that anyone tempted to write that might want to check it out first.
-Paul Raeburn
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