(Community Matters) Nicholas D. Kristof in the NYTimes.
so many Americans fall through the cracks and don’t have insurance, life expectancy is higher in most of Europe than in the United States. Even the people of Cyprus live longer than Americans, according to United Nations figures.
American children are twice as likely to die by the age of 5 as children in Portugal, Spain or Slovenia. And the World Health Organization found that an American woman’s lifetime risk of dying in childbirth is more than three times that of a woman in Greece, Spain or Germany.
Meanwhile, Americans spend $6,800 per person to get these second-rate results, about double what is paid in Canada or much of Europe.
McKinsey Global Institute found that the United States spends about $650 billion more on health care each year than one would expect for a country at its income level. That’s $2,100 per American, and it’s one gauge of the waste of our existing system.
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