Re: US healthcare system
**Some additional statistics on healthcare in the industrialized world:
***Waiting times *
- Patients having to wait more than four months for surgery, by country - **US 5%**, Aus 23%, NZ 26%, Can 27%, Britain 36% (Schoen, Blendon, DesRoches, Osborn "Comparison and HEalth Care Systtem Views and Experiences in Five Nations, 2001" Commonwealth Fund, May 2002/ Harvard School of Public Health) Public Health)
Equality
- **Low income people in the US without job-related insurance spend only about $50 more out of pocket for health than those with**, 2.4 visits to doctor each year (3.4 without). When they are seriously ill, they receive same level of treatment (Johnson and Crystal, "Uninsured Status and Out of Pocket Costs at Midlife', Health Services Research 35, no 5, Dec 2000)
Advanced technology
- **In availability of advanced medical technology, Canada ranks last out of the 29 OECD countries** ('It's the Prices, Stupid: Why the United States is so Different from Other Countries' Anderson, Reinhardt, Hussey and Petrosyan, Health Affairs, vol 22, no 3, May 2003)
- MRI units per capita: 2.5 canada, 3.9 UK, **8.1 US**; CT scanners, **13.6 US**, 8.2 Can, 6.5 UK, Lithotripsy units **1.5 US**, .4 Can, .2 UK (ibid)
- Coronary bypass (per 100,000 people per yr), **203 US**, 65 Can, 41 UK, coronary angioplasty **388.1 US,** 80.8 Can, 51 UK, renal dialysis **US 86.5**, Can 45.7, UK 27
**Quality**
- % of individuals 65+ reporting health as 'good', Aus 70.8, Can 70.2, Denmark 59.7, Ger 47.4, Neth 56.8, Nor 62.3, Swe 55.5, UK 56.5, **US 72.6** (OECD Health Data, 2002)
- Ages 45-64: Aus 81.8, Can 84.9, Den 74.2, Ger 58.2, Neth 71.7, Nor 75.6, Swe 71.1, UK 71, **USA 85.4**
- **In Britain, 20% of colon cancer considered curable at diagnosis are incurable by time of treatment **(The Observer, "Cash-strapped NHS Hospitals Chase Private Patient Bonanza" Anthony Browne Dec 2001)
- Breast cancer mortality ratio (% of those who have it that die from it) NZ 46 UK 46 Germ 31 Can 28 **US 25** France 35 Aus 28 (ibid)
- Prostate cancer mortality ratio - NZ 30 UK 57 Ger 44 Can 25 US 19 France 49 Aus 35 (bid)
Prescription drugs
- Only one in five drugs tested ever makes the market, averaging $900 million in costs for each new drug (Press release, "Total Cost to Develop a New Prescription Drug, Including Cost of Post-approval Research, is $897 Million" May 13, 2003, Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development)
- Economist Patricia Danzon discovered, excluding generic drugs (42% of US purchases), ignoring different consumption patterns, and ignoring rebates as a result of controlled study, comparing between 187 to 484 products, average prices in Canada, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland higher than in the US, but France, Italy, Japan, and the UK are lower. **But when variations of income are accounted for, prices in the US are lower than all except France **(Danzon, 'The Uses and Abuses of International Price Comparisons' in 'Competitive Strategies in the Pharmaceutical Industry, R. B. Hems (AEI press 1996), also 'Pharmaceutical Price Regulation: National Policies Versus Global Interests (AEI 1997)
- By shopping around, best price shopping versus Canadian drugs,** for seven of ten drugs, US buyers can lower their costs an average of 38% below Canadian price**, and all **ten drugs produces average cost of 10% below buying in Canada **(Survey of pharmaceutical websites by 'Lives at Risk: Single Payer Health Insurance Around the World')
- In Britain, the lack of access to the best cancer drugs costs lives of 25,000 Britons every year (Karol Sikora, 'Cancer Survival in Britain' British Medical Journal 319, no 7208 (Aug 1999) 461-62)