Amenable mortality - i.e. those deaths that could be avoided by timely and effective medical care - provides a better measure of the impact of health care on the population’s health status than life expectancy, even though it is affected by the prevalence of diseases as well as medical achievements (Gay et al., Finland’s amenable mortality rate for men is higher than in any other Nordic country, but for females it is the second lowest after Iceland. The results also vary widely across diseases. Diseases of the circulatory system and cancers, together, account for more than 80% of amenable mortality in Finland and the OECD.