Comment by nostrebored
4 years ago
The outcomes are definitely not objectively worse, to the point that the U.S. is a huge medical tourism destination.
The US population not taking care of themselves is a public health problem not a medical care quality issue.
"the U.S. is a huge medical tourism destination."
It's not in the top 5 by number of patients treated. Anecdotally I met people who went to Germany, Israel, India and Thailand for treatment, I never heard of anyone even discussing going to the US. The visas alone are a nightmare.
The U.S. is a huge medical tourism destination for rare and deadly disease. It’s undeniable and well documented.
The U.S. has the largest concentration of the best research hospitals in the world.
"destination for rare and deadly disease"
I see someone shifting the goalposts here, first we were saying that US healthcare is not worse in any metric, then we started measuring it's success by medical tourism, now are down to some special rare diseases.
Let's come back to where we were before, measures per unit of money spent, US healthcare delivers worse outcomes that any other developed nation. Measured in average health of its citizen, the outcomes aren't great. Life expectancy, and other metrics aren't particularly amazing.
> to the point that the U.S. is a huge medical tourism destination.
Of course, if you have the money to fly to the US, stay in the US and pay out-of-pocket for a medical procedure in the US, then yes, the US is a good destination. Which translates into: if you're rich, medicine in the US is great.
However, not all of us are rich. And definitely not all Americans are rich.
Well that’s not the OPs value judgment at all is it?
Sifted goalposts
This:
> The average American pays more for healthcare over their live than the average European, and the outcomes are objectively worse.
remains true. No matter how you want to spin it and pretend that medical tourism affects this in any way.
Edit:
For 2015, https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/c...
- Medical tourism to US: between 100k and 200k per year
- Medical tourism from US to other countries: 150k to 350k per year
Europe is ~500 million people
US is ~ 360 million people
Medical tourism is a drop in the bucket.
8 replies →
Re-read what you replied to: they were talking about "the average American", not the richest ones.
The total societal outcome -- spending vs outcome -- and therefore the average outcome too, for the USA as compared to most other developed countries... Pretty much sucks.