alt Hacker News> 15 out of the top 50 and 4/6 top hospitals in the world are in the US
Outliers do not say much about the overall quality of healthcare in a country. Rather obvious lesson in statistics.
Reminds me of the Russian mathematician who moved to the US after the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of his essays were criticizing American students, but in one essay he was quite frank:
Russians who graduate with math degrees are better than Americans who do so, by a wide margin. However, the average American is better at math because they still get access to some math education in university and do not need to be a top student for admission. Whereas in Russia, if you didn't meet a rather high bar, you simply couldn't get admitted as an engineering/physics/math program, and thus couldn't further your math education (I believe he said the cutoff was even before university).
Country with the top mathematicians, but country with worse math outcomes.
Perhaps my language was too imprecise.
My argument is that specifically the best care in the US is the best in the world. We have the best doctors and the best technology and the best treatments. This is not completely universal but it is also generally accurate.
Whether or not this care is accessible or the median quality is care is good, that is different.
I’m just saying we do get something for the money, it’s not like it all gets thrown down the drain. The best and brightest come to the US to get some of the huge spigots of money in the US healthcare system and it does drive innovation.