Surprising facts about US healthcare

from Scott Atlas:

Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers:

• Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom.
• Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway.
• The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries:

• Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease.
• By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians:

• Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report "excellent" health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent).
• Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as "fair or poor."

Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom:

• Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long -- sometimes more than a year -- to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.
• All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.
• In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

I am struck that, without the "awful" American system, the rest of the world would lose the benefits of innovation for new treatments, and also free-riding on drug costs.