Major Study Paints Picture Of America's Health System -- And It's Not Pretty

  So you assume Americans are the healthiest people in the free world? Not so fast, Charlie. The annual OECD Health at a Glance report for 2015 found:   1. The U.S. still leads in per capita health spending. Although U.S. health-spending growth has slowed down in recent years, it was still 2.5 times greater than the OECD average in 2013. The United States spends about $8,713 per person, by far the most of any country in the world. Other countries, including Turkey and India, spend less than $1,000 on health care per person annually.   2. Life expectancy in the U.S. is lower than in most other OECD countries. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report attributed this to the inconsistency of the U.S. health system and poor health-related behaviors. For example, the percentage of adults who smoke in the United States is among the lowest in OECD countries, but alcohol consumption is rising and the U.S. obesity rate is the highest.   There is now a gap of almost two years between life expectancy at birth in the United States compared with the average in the other OECD countries (78.8 years in the U.S .in 2013 compared with 80.5 years for the OECD average). In 1970, the life expectancy in the United States was one year above the OECD average, so the gap has widened, the study found.   3. Actually, the life expectancy gap has really widened for the U.S. The life expectancy for U.S. men in 2013 was 4.3 years shorter than ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news