Wealthiest older Americans worse off than poorest counterparts in other countries

http://www.aftau.org/weblog-medicine--health?=&storyid4704=2107&ncs4704=3

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an independent comparative study of healthcare systems in six Western countries, published last month in Social Science and Medicine, supports a move away from privatized medicine toward state-sponsored healthcare systems. In her research, Dina Maskileyson of Tel Aviv University's Gershon H. Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences found that privatized medical care in the U.S. has contributed to greater wealth-health inequality than state-sponsored healthcare systems in Sweden, the U.K., Israel, Germany, and the Czech Republic. According to her new study, the wealthiest older people in the U.S. surprisingly suffered from worse health than the poorest older people in the other countries reviewed. Moreover, household wealth has a far more powerful effect on the state of an older person's health in the U.S. than in any of the other countries.

"The positive association between household wealth and health is about twice as strong in the U.S. than in the other countries examined," said Ms. Maskileyson. "In the U.S., every additional percentage point in household wealth increased physical health by about twice as much as it did in the other countries. Among the six countries, household wealth was the most important factor in predicting health outcomes of older Americans."

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According to the study, the U.S.'s private-based healthcare system not only produced poorer health outcomes and increased the wealth-health inequality gap, it also left the wealthiest Americans, with access to the "best money can offer," still worse off than the poorest citizens in the U.K., Germany, Sweden, and the Czech Republic.

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