A survey released on January 8, 2008 of preventable deaths in 19 industrialized countries ranked the United States last when it comes to providing health care to its citizens. The survey was conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, a charitable organization created to promote health care in the industrialized parts of the world. Their study, which was called “Measuring the Health of Nations: Updating an Earlier Analysis” and published in the Health Affairs journal this month, examined the death rates for individuals under the age of 75, particularly looking for problems that could have been prevented through more effective health care.
The same study had been conducted twice before: once in 1997/1998 and more recently in 2002/2003. Part of establishing the country rankings involved looking at each country’s improvement as compared to past studies. While all of the other countries saw a decline in preventable deaths by an average of 16 percent, the United States’ rate only decreased by 4%. The U. S. was also ranked last in the 2002/2003 results after placing 15th in the 1997/1998 results. Had the United States shown similar improvements approximately 100,000 deaths would have been prevented.
The survey’s top five countries included France in first place followed by Japan, Australia, Austria, and Canada. The survey also pointed out the United States spends more on health care than do any of the countries with better results.
