Although it is frequently believed that the United States offers some of the greatest healthcare in the world, the veracity of this claim has been contested for a while. The quality of healthcare in America in 2009 was a bit of a “mixed bag,” according to a study by the Urban Institute; it performed rather well in areas like cancer care but lagged in death rates from curable and avoidable diseases. Despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the interim, 2014 research from the Commonwealth Fund found that the same tendencies had persisted. The US “ranked worst overall among 11 industrialised nations on metrics of health system quality, efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthy lives,” according to the report.
It’s noteworthy that the US was found to have the greatest prices and the worst results. An infographic comparing the healthcare systems of the United States and 16 other Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries was created by MHA@GW, the online Executive Master of Health Administration programme at George Washington University, to further explore these issues. The following is an outline of the elements that influence US healthcare quality and makes comparisons with how other nations spend their healthcare budgets.
Factors Affecting the Quality of Healthcare
Health service accessibility and use rates are two aspects of healthcare quality that vary around the globe. The infographic uses vaccine coverage rates for 1-year-old children to measure these factors. China was the top-ranked nation, with the US coming in a distant 12th place overall. The chart contrasts the utilisation of improved drinking water sources across the list of nations to indicate risk factors.
The top 7 countries in this area all reported that 100% of their people were utilising upgraded sources, placing the US at the 99th percentile and eighth place overall. A major aspect influencing the quality of healthcare is an adequate health system infrastructure. An aggregation of data from 2007 to 2013 is used to assess the density of the physician workforce. Germany placed first in this area, with 38.9 doctors per 10,000 people in the population. In contrast, the US came in sixth place with 24.5 doctors per 10,000 people. The US has 2.5 practising physicians per 1000 population, which is lower than the OECD average of 3.2—along with a smaller proportion of hospital beds.
The Effect of Spending Per Person
One could anticipate that the US’s per-person healthcare spending is somewhat to blame for such dismal rankings. However, the US spends 54% more per person on healthcare than the majority of industrialised nations worldwide, making it the country with the highest healthcare expenses globally. In terms of life expectancy and mortality rates, other nations are performing better, with Singapore emerging as the clear victor. The top eight nations in terms of both per-person spending and life expectancy rates are the same eight nations. Singapore is second in terms of life expectancy and seventh in terms of spending.
Healthcare spending in the US is apparently down overall, although CMS predicts an increase through 2024. Regardless of whether this is the case, a rise in care quality is also necessary to improve healthcare in our nation. Compared to other wealthy nations, the United States spends more per person on healthcare. Every nation has different political, economic, and social characteristics that influence how much it will spend on healthcare. As a result, each nation allocates a different amount of resources for healthcare.
In general, wealthier nations like the United States will spend more on healthcare than less developed nations. In order to better understand healthcare spending in the United States, it is useful to compare it to spending in other affluent, comparable nations. These nations have gross domestic product (GDP) and per capita GDP that are higher than the median for all OECD nations. The United States had the highest healthcare expenses per capita among the OECD nations in 2021, spending an estimated $12,318 per person on healthcare. In contrast, wealthier OECD nations outside the United States averaged just $5,829 per person in healthcare expenditures, with Germany ranking second with around $7,383 per person. These comparisons show that American healthcare spending is disproportionately high.