Following up on Clark’s recent post on the superiority of English health outcomes, there’s a great new entry over at Malcolm Gladwell’s blog. Gladwell spends more time breaking down the new JAMA study’s methodolgy and concludes that Americans are getting a rotten deal on their health care expenditures.
Americans spend almost 2.5 times as the British on health care. But even after adjusting for race, income, age, and lifestyle risk factors…
…Americans are really, really sick compared to the British. In every socio-economic group, for instance, the prevalence of diabetes is roughly double in the United States than it is in the United Kingdom. Rates of hypertension, heart disease, heart attacks, stroke, lung disease and cancer are also all higher in the United States. And not just a little big higher. Much higher.
