Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I have to ask: what the hell statistics have you seen? A baby born in the USA is almost three times more likely to die at or immediately following birth than in Japan . [1] Your cancer stat is true for prostate and breast cancer, but Japan has the best rates for some other types of cancers [2], and importantly Japanese people actually develop much less cancer[2.1], one reason for which is much better preventati…
Infant mortality is a horrible statistic. Birth registration varies by country, so what counts as "infant mortality" is so varied that it's useless to compare. > Japanese people actually develop much less cancer[2.1], one reason for which is much better preventative medical care (for average people); the average Japanese person sees a doctor three times more often than the average Americans, and have three times more…
> Cancer doesn't work that way. Seeing the doctor 3 times per year is not going to keep you from developing cancer.
Utterly, completely incorrect. Seeing a doctor more frequently and doing more preventative care demonstrably prevents cancer:
> They may catch it earlier.
Exactly. Early enough, in fact, to prevent cancer from happening at all. A pre-cancerous growth in the breast is found, treated, and/or removed. A polyp in the colon is discovered and resected. Cancer avoided in both cases.
These kinds of things happen a huge number of times every year here in the comprehensive annual health checks which, under the Japanese health care system, typical companies are required to both pay for (the portion the insurance doesn't pay), and give their employees paid time off to undergo.
> For the average American the number of times they go to the doctor has nothing to do with cost.
Extremely hard to believe when 47 million Americans have no insurance of any kind, and 100+ million more have low-quality health insurance, and more than half of Americans are now living in poverty or low-income situations.[1]
Furthermore, cost means more than the price the hospital charges. Virtually none of my American coworkers or friends regularly undergo a comprehensive medical checkup -- those that do are those who already have something wrong, like high cholesterol.
100% of my Japanese friends and colleagues do it every single year. Why? Here, if you skip your health check, then you're just working at the office instead, because you do it on work time. So the incentives are sane; why not go?
That's baked into the system, and just another reason that the Japanese system provides better health care to most of the people (the bottom 80%-90% of income brackets, I think).
> "infant mortality" is so varied that it's useless to compare.
Not when you are comparing the USA and Japan. That might be true when comparing other sets of countries.
Methodological difficulties aside, infant mortality is one of the most important metrics by which one could compare health cares systems -- what matters more than whether your baby lives or dies? Not much.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/us/experts-say-bleak-accou...