re: Why do people think that American doctors are better than other countries?

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According to a recent study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Other studies report much higher figures, claiming the number of deaths from medical error to be as high as 440,000. The reason for the discrepancy is that physicians, funeral directors, coroners and medical examiners rarely note on death certificates the human errors and system failures involved. Yet death certificates are what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rely on to post statistics for deaths nationwide.

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Doctors are prone to drug and alcohol abuse. It's estimated that rates of addiction among the general population run from 8% to 10%; among physicians, the rates start at 10% and rise to 15%.

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More recently, a 2012 study of American surgeons published in JAMA Surgery found 15.4 percent suffered from an alcohol use disorder. Female surgeons (25.6 percent) were more likely than male surgeons (13.9 percent) to exhibit symptoms of alcohol addiction.

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