Health Outcomes

Summary: Depending on the year and the number of countries being compared, U.S. life expectancy is, roughly, between 30th and 50th

— 30th as per World Health Organization, June 2008 … position at CIA graph

— 50th as per the CIA estimate for 2009

— 26th as per U.S. Center for Health Statistics for 2002

Life Expectancy Rank is 30th According to World Health Organization

World Health Organization¹ — Comparison of Health Statistics²

Life Expectancy Rank is 50th According to Central Intelligence Agency

CIA World Factbook – Rank Order - Life expectancy at birth: the status of the Factbook as of March 27, 2008, the United States was 50th in life expectancy based on 2009 estimates.

Life Expectancy Rank is 26th According to the U.S. Center for Health Statistics

United States National Center for Health Statistics — Comparison of Health Statistics

• A comparison of 37 countries is provided in the Chartbook on Trends in the Health of Americans, 2006, as follows:
  • U.S. life expectancy at birth for both males and females was 26th in 2002

Here are the countries with better life expectancies than the United States:

Ability to Minimize Deaths Due to Preventable Diseases

Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

• A comparison of the number of preventable deaths
• “(They) tracked deaths that they deemed could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked nations on how they did.” – as per an article by Reuters
• Study of 19 countries on minimizing the number of preventable deaths:
  • The U.S. ranked 15th out of 19 using 1997-1998 data.
  • The U.S. ranked 19th out of 19 using 2002-2003 data.
    • Rankings from 1st to 19th: France, Japan, Australia, Spain, Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Austria, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Britain, Ireland, Portugal, United States
• If the U.S. was only an average performer among the 19 countries:
  • 75,000/year lives per year would be saved, as highlighted in the table above.
• If the U.S. was a top performer (the average of France, Japan and Australia):
  • 101,000 lives per year under age 75 would be saved (277 per day).
• Poor health care access in the U.S. was the basis of a comment by one of the researchers in a Reuters interview.

Sources, Additional Reading

75,000 preventable deaths per year

• As indicated below by the Commonwealth Fund information, 75,000 is the conservative number of persons who die in the U.S. due to the United States failing to do an adequate job at prevention, at least as compared to the 18 other countries.
• As reported by the Commonwealth Fund
  • “… authors estimated that approximately 75,000 to 101,00 preventable deaths could be averted in the U.S. “[E]ven the more conservative estimate of 75,000 deaths is almost twice the Institute of Medicine’s (lower) estimate of the number of deaths attributable to medical errors in the United States each year,” the authors say.”
• As also reported by Reuters
  • ” …“I wouldn’t say it (the last-place ranking) is a condemnation, because I think health care in the U.S. is pretty good if you have access. But if you don’t, I think that’s the main problem, isn’t it?” (bolding added)
  • ” … the researchers considered deaths before age 75 from numerous causes, including heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, diabetes, certain bacterial infections and complications of common surgical procedures.”

Best Health Care? Some people think that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world! Not with these numbers! And not with the results of other studies of the world’s health systems, as summarized by by the New York Times editorial of August 12, 2007 titled World’s Best Medical Care?.