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We may spend more on healthcare than any other country in the world, but hey — at least we get a first class system in return for all that dough, right? I mean, aside from all those poor schmoes who don’t have health insurance. At least the rest of us get great healthcare, don’t we?

No. To go along with his recent series of posts on healthcare costs, Aaron Carroll just finished up another series on healthcare quality. The chart on the right shows where we stand compared to other rich countries:

With the exception of available technology, we do not rate well against comparable countries. And that’s the take home message. We can argue about which metric is best to describe the quality of a health care system, but it almost doesn’t matter what you pick. Don’t like population statistics? Fine. Choose another. But unless you think the only important thing is how many MRI machines are available, we’re still going to look bad. Not only does the system not perform up to snuff, but pretty much every stakeholder I discussed agreed that it’s not good.

The entire series is here. The whole thing is worth a read.

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DEFEND THE TRUTH. DEFEND JOURNALISM.

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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