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“A persistent health-care myth is that the U.S. system is uniquely wasteful versus the European countries that spend far less per patient as a result of tight government control. Only the establishment experts who spread this myth will be surprised, but new research shows American patients are often getting more value—better outcomes and longer lives—in return for those extra dollars. More remarkable still, the news arrives via the policy journal Health Affairs, in a symposium on the cost and quality of U.S. cancer care. This is like the Vatican saying go ahead, worship the raven images and false idols. Tomas Philipson of the University of Chicago and colleagues compare U.S. oncology spending over the period from 1983 to 1999 (the last year for which data are available) with that in 10 European Union countries. Costs were lower overall overseas and grew by 16%, while they grew by 49% in the U.S. Yet U.S. cancer mortality rates are lower, despite higher cancer rates, and “We found that the value of survival gains greatly outweighed the costs, which suggests that the costs of cancer care were indeed ‘worth it,’” Mr. Philipson et al. write. Throughout the entire period, U.S. cancer survival gains were larger, reaching 11.1 years over 1995 to 1999 against 9.3 years in the EU. The researchers then compared the U.S. and EU gains using conservative, commonly accepted measures for the value of a statistical life, less the cost of the care. The U.S. comes out ahead by $598 billion. In other words, though the U.S. spends more, patients and society benefit far more.”
