{"id":2604,"date":"2006-10-18T09:52:04","date_gmt":"2006-10-18T09:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2604"},"modified":"2006-10-18T09:52:04","modified_gmt":"2006-10-18T09:52:04","slug":"a_lesson_from_e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2604","title":{"rendered":"A Lesson from Europe on Healthcare"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Leonhardt<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column arguing that this country’s increased medical spending over the last half-century has, on the whole, been overwhelmingly worth it. Thanks to new treatments for everything from premature births to heart attacks, human life has continued to lengthen — defying expectations — even without major improvements in public health. Yet, strangely, we talk about medical spending as if it were nothing more than a drag on the economy, rather than an investment in the most important thing of all: our well-being.<\/p>\n

I received about 500 e-mail responses from readers, and the most common reaction was a version of a simple question. “Why do Americans spend so much more than folks in most other developed countries while getting worse results?” as Sumati Eberstadt of East Greenwich, R.I., wrote.<\/p>\n

In Greece, the government and individuals combine to spend about $2,300 per capita on health care each year, and the average life expectancy is 79 years. Canada, where the hospitals are probably cleaner, spends about $3,300, and people live to about 80. Here in the United States, we spend more than $6,000, yet life expectancy is just below 78.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Leonhardt: A few weeks ago, I wrote a column arguing that this country’s increased medical spending over the last half-century has, on the whole, been overwhelmingly worth it. Thanks to new treatments for everything from premature births to heart attacks, human life has continued to lengthen — defying expectations — even without major improvements […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,18,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}