It’s a Myth that Single-payer Systems Provide Better Care

People who make this claim usually note that life expectancy is higher in countries where socialized medicine is practiced, such as Canada and Europe. But life expectancy is influenced by variables aside from the quality of a country’s health care system including diet, genetics, infant mortality, exercise, smoking, pollution, and even marital status.

A better way to evaluate health care systems is to review the outcomes of certain health problems. For example, a study published last year in the British medical journal Lancet Oncology suggests America is much better at treating cancer than Europe or Canada.  Researchers found Americans have better survival rates five years after diagnosis for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers.  An American man has nearly a 20 percent better chance of living five years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer than his European counterpart. Among women who are diagnosed with breast cancer, only one-fifth die in the U.S., compared to one third in France and Germany and almost half in the U.K. and New Zealand.  Data about outcomes tells us a lot more about the quality of a health care system than life expectancy rates because the relationship between treatment and outcomes is much more direct.