4 ms·

Child mortality in the US is indeed higher than UK and comparable countries https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality-igme?tab=chart&time=1975..2019&c

Child mortality in the US is indeed higher than UK and comparable countries https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality-igme?tab=chart&time=1975..2019&country=GBR~USA~SWE~FRA~JPN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality-igme?tab=... But maternal death (The number of person who die from pregnancy-related causes) is also more than 10 times higher than comparable countries and was raising for 20 years while other comparable countries were lowering it. It seems an even worse picture of the situation. Adult women dying at 10 times the rate of OECD countries because of pregnancy. It will probably raise again given the new limitations/bans on abortion (accessible abortion is correlated with lower maternal death) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-maternal-deaths?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~FRA~SWE~JPN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-maternal-deaths... Life expectancy in the US is quite lower than comparable countries and stopped growing (but it might be related to the 8 to 10 times higher homicide rate than other OECD countries) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart&time=1977..latest&country=JPN~GBR~USA~FRA~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart... Death rate from HIV/AIDS is nearly 6 times higher than the UK and it’s not lowering anymore (it has plateaued at a much higher level than comparable countries) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hiv-death-rates?tab=chart&country=GBR~USA~FRA~JPN~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hiv-death-rates?tab=chart... Is there a health measure that you can find where the US is better or at least at the same level than say UK or at least France? (which is sadly for us French not the best in class…) Not a trick question, I’m curious to see if the US have some outlier health measure that it aces, sometimes it happens!

brigandish 4y ago
> Not a trick question, I’m curious to see if the US have some outlier health measure that it aces, sometimes it happens! I appreciate that, no worries. Without looking I would go for any cancer statistic, as the UK is often terrible in those[1]. So, I did a search of the OECD Health Care Quality Indicators[2] (as they're the ones used to compare countries) to see if I was right. (As an aside, I look at these every few years and the last time I looked I found some surprising stats, like the ones about child mortality in the States, but occasionally there's a more complex reason behind a poor statistic[3]). Anyway, it seems I was (sadly) right: ## Breast cancer 5 year net survival France 86.8 87.2 86.7 United Kingdom 79.8 83.8 85.6 United States 88.9 89.8 90.2 ## Colon cancer 5 year net survival France 60.7 63.6 63.7 United Kingdom 52.0 56.5 60.0 United States 64.7 65.5 64.9 Those are the age-standardised survival (%) spread across 3 different time periods (I didn't want to have to reproduce the whole thing so you don't get everything labelled!:) Anyway, those are the first two I looked at. I've done this before and honestly, the US system holds up very well. I'm sure it does even better if it's adjusted for economic class - which obviously opens up a barrel of probably quite fair criticism. I know that some on here complain about how the US can bankrupt you if you get sick, but I'd take that over the UK's system in a heart beat. Not sure about France, though it does seem to have a more sane system than the UK. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201111165643/https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/uk-cancer-survival-rates-below-european-average/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201111165643/https://www.nhs.u... [2] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=51882 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=51882 [3] https://academyhealth.org/node/1891 https://academyhealth.org/node/1891 Edit: missed off a markdown link ref
- DanBC 4y ago
  5 year survival is not a particularly useful statistic though. Those people are not living longer, they're being diagnosed earlier. The all cause mortality hasn't been changed. Rates of regret for cancer treatment are quite high - people at the end of their life sometimes wish they'd spent more time doing stuff with family and less time getting unpleasant and painful treatment in hospital. If you take every man over the age of 55 and provide rigorous diagnosis for prostate cancer, but you then provide zero treatment to anyone, your 5 year survival rates suddenly look really good. This is because you've diagnosed a lot of slow growing cancer that doesn't kill people. But obviously you've done nothing to improve all cause mortality or quality of life. https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/98/24/1761/2521971 https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/98/24/1761/2521971 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454760/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454760/ > Our findings suggest that there are no reliable relationships between changes in 5-year survival and cancer incidence or mortality. Increases in 5-year survival might therefore represent poor indicators of progress in cancer control at the population level. In the absence of over-diagnosis, 5-year survival might only indicate improved diagnosis and treatment in clinical practice.

brigandish 4y ago

> Not a trick question, I’m curious to see if the US have some outlier health measure that it aces, sometimes it happens! I appreciate that, no worries. Without looking I would go for any cancer statistic, as the UK is often terrible in those[1]. So, I did a search of the OECD Health Care Quality Indicators[2] (as they're the ones used to compare countries) to see if I was right. (As an aside, I look at these every few years and the last time I looked I found some surprising stats, like the ones about child mortality in the States, but occasionally there's a more complex reason behind a poor statistic[3]). Anyway, it seems I was (sadly) right: ## Breast cancer 5 year net survival France 86.8 87.2 86.7 United Kingdom 79.8 83.8 85.6 United States 88.9 89.8 90.2 ## Colon cancer 5 year net survival France 60.7 63.6 63.7 United Kingdom 52.0 56.5 60.0 United States 64.7 65.5 64.9 Those are the age-standardised survival (%) spread across 3 different time periods (I didn't want to have to reproduce the whole thing so you don't get everything labelled!:) Anyway, those are the first two I looked at. I've done this before and honestly, the US system holds up very well. I'm sure it does even better if it's adjusted for economic class - which obviously opens up a barrel of probably quite fair criticism. I know that some on here complain about how the US can bankrupt you if you get sick, but I'd take that over the UK's system in a heart beat. Not sure about France, though it does seem to have a more sane system than the UK. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201111165643/https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/uk-cancer-survival-rates-below-european-average/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201111165643/https://www.nhs.u... [2] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=51882 https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=51882 [3] https://academyhealth.org/node/1891 https://academyhealth.org/node/1891 Edit: missed off a markdown link ref

DanBC 4y ago
5 year survival is not a particularly useful statistic though. Those people are not living longer, they're being diagnosed earlier. The all cause mortality hasn't been changed. Rates of regret for cancer treatment are quite high - people at the end of their life sometimes wish they'd spent more time doing stuff with family and less time getting unpleasant and painful treatment in hospital. If you take every man over the age of 55 and provide rigorous diagnosis for prostate cancer, but you then provide zero treatment to anyone, your 5 year survival rates suddenly look really good. This is because you've diagnosed a lot of slow growing cancer that doesn't kill people. But obviously you've done nothing to improve all cause mortality or quality of life. https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/98/24/1761/2521971 https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/98/24/1761/2521971 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454760/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454760/ > Our findings suggest that there are no reliable relationships between changes in 5-year survival and cancer incidence or mortality. Increases in 5-year survival might therefore represent poor indicators of progress in cancer control at the population level. In the absence of over-diagnosis, 5-year survival might only indicate improved diagnosis and treatment in clinical practice.