In a recent "Monday Night Football" game, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field. An immediate response by the trainers, stadium medical staff and the superb intensive care team at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center saved Hamlin’s life. The University of Cincinnati is one of the best places in the U.S. — or the world — for the young man to have been treated.
The episode was a vivid illustration of the contradiction of the American medical system: Our sophisticated emergency treatment is unrivaled even as the comprehensive U.S. patient care system remains the world’s most expensive and possibly the most dysfunctional.
Nowhere has this paradox been more evident than during the COVID-19 pandemic. No country has better care for patients with advanced COVID-19, whose lungs are severely damaged by the coronavirus. But these represent only a fraction of all COVID-19 deaths because most patients die of underlying chronic health conditions or untreatable complications. This is where the U.S. is failing, and, consequently, U.S. mortality and deaths per capita are higher than in most of the world.
