How horrible socialized medicine really is. [View all]

A doctor friend sent me this paper from the NEJM about age/wealth outcomes in the US versus Northern and wester Europe. We don't look good in comparison.

From the abstract:

We performed a longitudinal, retrospective cohort study involving adults 50 to 85 years of age who were included in the Health and Retirement Study and the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe between 2010 and 2022. Wealth quar tiles were defined according to age group and country, with quartile 1 comprising the poorest participants and quartile 4 the wealthiest. Mortality and Kaplan–Meier curves were estimated for each wealth quartile across the United States and 16 coun tries in northern and western, southern, and eastern Europe. We used Cox propor tional-hazards models that included adjustment for baseline covariates (age group, sex, marital status [ever or never married], educational level [any or no college edu cation], residence [rural or nonrural], current smoking status [smoking or nonsmok ing], and absence or presence of a previously diagnosed long-term condition) to quantify the association between wealth quartile and all-cause mortality from 2010 through 2022 (the primary outcome).

snip. Results
The gap in survival between the top and bottom wealth quartiles was wider in the United States than in Europe. Survival among the participants in the top wealth quartiles in northern and western Europe and southern Europe appeared to be higher than that among the wealthiest Americans. Survival in the wealthiest U.S. quartile appeared to be similar to that in the poorest quartile in northern and western Europe. (Bolding is mine)
CONCLUSIONS
In cohort studies conducted in the United States and Europe, greater wealth was associated with lower mortality, and the association between wealth and mortality appeared to be more pronounced in the United States than in Europe.

In short it is better to be in the 2nd quartile of population in Europe than the upper quartile of the US. Despite the money differences in health costs.

This is a scientific paper, for those who don't regularly read such things it is a bit dense.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bafo2FslnasByN8HqvsQbf9D1_bdMZrXzxC41iDUJx4/edit?tab=t.0