The state of US health: The truth stings

It’s going to be hard to anesthetize this one with compassion. I’m sorry, but the report card on US health is not good. We aren’t heading in the right direction, and everyone involved knows that it’s because of a failure to accept the truth. You have probably already heard the news concerning the state of US health. This week, a mega-group of health researchers (who call themselves the US Burden of Disease Collaborators) published an exhaustive report detailing the health of this nation. (The actual study is available (free) at JAMA. Ron Winslow from the WSJ has this excellent summary.) On the upside, and I could only find one upside of the report, life expectancy in the US increased 3 years, from age 75 in 1990 to age 78 in 2010. That’s it. We spend almost 20% of our GDP on healthcare, and we get three years. The bad news is really bad. First, this small gain in longevity actually decreased our standing among other nations, We fell to 27th place, down from 20th in 1990. Imagine: the United States of America, with all the fury of its healthcare-on-demand, the stents, the ICDs, the chemo, the brand-name medicines, the fish oil, the vitamins, and all that, grabs 27th place. And it gets worse. The three added years of life are not always good ones. We may live longer, but the gap between healthy years and years with chronic disability changed little over the past decade. The report documents what we all know: rates of chronic disability are on the rise. A Failu...
Source: Dr John M - Category: Cardiology Authors: Source Type: blogs