US has highest death rates—despite spending the most on medical care

Despite spending more on medicine than any other country, America has the highest death rates across all age groups.

The higher rates also meant the US had more excess deaths—the rate of deaths above the expected average—and experienced more deaths during the Covid-19 outbreak than any other wealthy nation, say researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

They looked at mortality levels in the US, England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain from 2017 to 2021. During that period, the annual number of excess deaths in the US nearly doubled—and 45 percent was due to factors other than Covid.  In 2021, 25 percent of all excess deaths in the US were attributed to Covid, which is just 223,000 of the 892,000 excess deaths that year.

The figures underline the US’s failing health policies, which do not take into account social, economic and psychological dimensions of health, including a weak social security net, inadequate healthcare access, and poor lifestyles including bad diets and lack of exercise, say the researchers.

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