On comparing health care sytems in other countries

It has been said that other industrialized countries provide better health care at lower cost than the U.S. because the government pays the health care costs of the individuals. The situation is much more complicated.

First let us consider whether other industrialized countries do provide better health care than the U.S. How do you measure the quality of health care, or phrased differently what metric do you use? Life expectancy is one metric and in most industrialized nations the life expectancy is greater than the U.S and it is argued that people in other countries therefore receive better health care. Comparisons are not valid unless you hold other variables equal. The fact is that the obesity rate is much higher in the U.S. than in most other industrialized countries. That may be a factor in why life expectancy in the U.S. is lower.

But life expectancy is not the only metric one can use. One can also use the 5 year survival rates of cancer patients. Using that metric do better than other industrial countries (see this paper). Maybe one could argue that if you are going to get cancer, you're better off in the U.S. but if you're going to break a leg, you get better care in other countries.

As to costs, it may be that other industrialized country spend less on health care because they ration health care, in other words the other countries may not pay for some medical procedures that patients want. Suppose someone is 80 years old and can benefit from an expensive hip surgery. It's been asserted (sorry I don't have the sources) that she wouldn't get that surgery in Britain, but Medicare would pay for it in the U.S. I'm not criticizing Britain; they voted for that system, and they're happy with it. Health care is not a right in the sense that free speech is a right. A right to a hip surgery implies that someone else has the obligation to pay for it. Free speech does not imply an obligation on another party. In the U.S. we ration health care, to some extent, by the ability to pay. Every country rations health care some way. The cost of health care can be high or low depending on what you get for it.

In summary the assertion that other industrialized countries provide better health care at a lower cost is neither true or false. It is meaningless unless there is agreement on what it means to have better health care and unless one examines how health care is rationed.