NEWS: Canadian health care ‘excellent value for money’, says British researcher

As reported on the front-page of the Ottawa Citizen this week, “Canada’s health care system offers ‘excellent value for the money’ says a British researcher who has studied preventable deaths in 19 industrialized nations. The study, to be released today in Health Affairs, looks at ‘amenable mortality’ — deaths that would not have occurred if effective health care had been available…Such deaths accounted for 23 per cent of overall deaths in men and 32 per cent of deaths in women, the researchers said.”

The 2002-2003 study found that amenable deaths in the U.S. stood at 109.65 per 100,000 population, putting the U.S. in last place among fourteen western European nations, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Canada’s amenable death rate was 76.83, putting Canada in sixth place after France, Japan, Australia, Spain and Italy.

Martin McKee, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-author of the study, says, “This study shows that Canada’s health system has performed very well in its ability to prevent people from dying from treatable conditions…Given that the U.S health care system is far more expensive, this suggests that Canadians are getting excellent value for money…The bottom line is that the Canadian health system delivers outcomes that are substantially better than those in its southern neighbour.”

The article ‘Canada’s health system getting better, study finds’ can be found at http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=2dd77025-5d16-4542-b21f-e6abf9e440f6&k=44932.

The 14-page study is at http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/pdf/Nolte_article.pdf.

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