Despite highest health spending, Americans' life expectancy falls behind other countries'
America continues to lag behind other nations when it comes to gains in life expectancy, and commonly cited causes for our poor performance - obesity, smoking, traffic fatalities and homicide - are not to blame, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The study looked at health spending; behavioural risk factors like obesity and smoking; and 15-year survival rates for men and women ages 45 and 65 in the U.S. and 12 other nations - Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Commonwealth Fund-supported study, 'What Changes in Survival Rates Tell Us About U.S. Health Care, is published as a Health Affairs Web Exclusive...