If you think our health care system is the best in the world, you are dead wrong.
U.S. Health Disadvantage is Not Inevitable | Inequalities.
“Two major research studies in the last year compare health indicators in the United States with other major upper-income countries. Both exhaustively review government statistics and published articles. The first study, from the Institute of Medicine, draws on a panel of luminary demographers and epidemiologists to explore the causes of U.S. health disadvantage. The second study, from the Global Burden of Disease Group (led by Christopher Murray), applies complex modeling to assess the relative consequences of different diseases and their sequelae on premature death and disability.
The two reports reach the same conclusion: the United States fares worse than virtually every other rich country across a broad set of outcomes – babies in the United States are more likely to die at birth; teenagers are more likely to have unintended pregnancies, to be the victims of homicide, and to die in a car accident; and adults are more likely to experience diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, drug overdoses, and HIV…”
For example, the probability of survival up to age 50 for women:
