News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills. Parent comment

Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by dv_dt on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @05:57PM (#18720740)
I think the US has better cancer survival rates in areas than other nations, but if that is all-around significant one would think that would reflect out in better life expectancy overall. However, the US is a huge negative outlier in life expectancy and child mortality with universal healthcare nations outperforming on those measures too.

https://ourworldindata.org/the-link-between-life-expectancy-...

The most recent life expectancy numbers are the hardest to interpret, the US has the only three-year-running negative life expectancy growth in the first world nations - but some argue we should separate healthcare from the suicide numbers that are a big contributors. I don't know that I agree with that as there is a fuzzy line between healthcare and social care efforts.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by amalcon on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @08:55PM (#18721898)
Life expectancy is a weird stat by which to measure healthcare outcomes. For starters, it responds rather strongly to demographics. E.g. having more males reduces life expectancy holding all else equal. There are many things like this.

Age-adjusted all-cause death rate is the better stat for measuring life-saving outcomes.

Child mortality is certainly a useful stat for its purpose, though.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by dv_dt on Thursday December 20, 2018 @11:39AM (#18726373)
> Age-adjusted all-cause death rate is the better stat for measuring life-saving outcomes.

Are there sources of that stat over time and between nations that you would recommend?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills by amalcon on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:29PM (#18726962)
WHO is the best source I know of for most things like this. I was unable to find the exact stat I was looking for, but here is e.g. data on all-cause mortality rate between ages 18 and 60:

http://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.1360?lang=en

It probably still supports the point you are trying to make, I just get grumpy about statistic selection.

[ Parent | on HN ]