Expatriating for Better Health Care: A Growing Reality
More and more people are considering expatriation from the U.S. due to its substantial and lingering health care woes.
As legislators debate endlessly over a new health care bill in the U.S., many people are increasingly wondering if they’d be better off growing old elsewhere. Health care has become a primary motivator for many people in making that grand leap abroad.
First, let’s be honest about the situation. The U.S. spends more money than any other country in the industrialized world on health care, and yet systemwide it provides some of the least effective. In fact, studies have indicated that the U.S. ranks dead last (no pun intended) among other industrialized nations on preventable deaths [via, the Commonwealth Fund].
In concrete terms, that means that over 100,000 fewer Americans would die annually if the U.S. improved its preventable death rate to that of the top 3 performing nations. That’s astounding.
Furthermore, over the last couple of decades the effectiveness of the U.S. health care system in preventing preventable deaths has actually decreased by 4%, while all the other nations listed have improved by 16% overall. If you’re following the trends alone, then expatriation might be one of the best things you could do for your own health.
Looking at the measure of amenable deaths due to health care is just one way of evaluating a health care system, but it’s an important indicator. Thus, utilizing this particular study’s results, we thought it’d be useful for aspiring expats to see a list of which countries fared the best.
Here are the top 10 industrialized countries with the lowest number of deaths amenable to health care:
10. Greece (79.38)
9. Sweden (80.63)
8. The Netherlands (79.11)
7. Norway (79.78)
6. Canada (80.34)
5. Italy (79.94)
4. Spain (79.78)
3. Australia (80.62)
2. Japan (82.07)
1. France (80.87)
To give another comparative measurement, the number aside each nation is their overall life expectancy. Though life expectancy is not necessarily directly tied to a nation’s health care system, it can at least give another idea of overall health of a population. That can give expats an idea of where they might go to easiest live the healthiest lifestyle.
As a comparison, the U.S. life expectancy is 78.06– significantly lower than any other country on this list.