U.S. RANKS LAST AMONG INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS IN DEALING WITH PREVENTABLE

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REUTERS - France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States
worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable
conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations. If the U.S. health care
system performed as well as those of those top three countries, there
would be 101,000 fewer deaths in the United States per year, according
to researchers writing in the journal Health Affairs.

Researchers Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine tracked deaths that they deemed could have been
prevented by access to timely and effective health care, and ranked
nations on how they did. . .

Nolte said the large number of Americans who lack any type of health
insurance -- about 47 million people in a country of about 300 million,
according to U.S. government estimates -- probably was a key factor in
the poor showing of the United States compared to other industrialized
nations in the study.

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