The fact is that using every single metric, the US has the best health care on the planet.

1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

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

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

4. Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:

* Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).

* Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.

* More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).

* Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).

5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”

6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

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

8. 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 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).

9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.

10. 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 developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525427.html

See that link on the bottom of the article canadian? Most americans are smart enough to follow the link when they need to verify the info.
How dumb can you butt monkeys be? See the "additional details"? See the link under it? COULD you 2 clowns be any lamer?
And some people are so dumb they compare average life expectancy. You do realize that includes car accidents, murders, as well as premature deaths that occur naturally dont you? I mean you cant be that stupid can you? Ok so that includes 40 million illegals that may have never seen a doctor in their lives as well as the 12000 mostly teenagers that shoot themselves fighting for drug turf. I mean you do realize that dont you? Ok so add in the number 12000 18 – 25 year olds (mostly) and lets see, do you think that might skew the numbers? Are you people really all that stupid?
and endo, only a dumb butt monkey would disagree with such a well written article that went into such detail and cited with…. um…. nothing. GOod job.
nice question tada. "ranked 37th in the world" Despite your lack of citing WHO ranked it (a common mistake amongst those that want to use discredited numbers) I do realize it is the UN or the WHO that did it. Having worked for the WHO I know how they do their rankings. They compare the health care that the richest person gets to the care the poorest person gets. The closer they are to identical, the higher you rank. So if you wanted to hand out bandaids and peroxide for compound fractures, and did that for everyone, you would rank #1. See why people laugh at these organizations run by 3rd worlders? The fact is that anyone with a dime on the planet, when they get seriously ill, flees to the US for medical care.
ok mewto lets compare the SARS outbreak of a few years back. both the US and canada had about 1000 cases of SARS. IN canada 49 people died. In the US ONE 70+ year old died. Id say that makes US health care better for infectious diseases too!
Tada you want to hear horror stories? IF your insurance company turns you down you can sue the crap out of them. If you are turned down by obama care, you cant do a thing. ITs written right in the obama care law.

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