According to a study by the charity Commonwealth Fund, despite spending more of its gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare than other high-income nations, the US comes in last in terms of access to care, administrative effectiveness, equity, and healthcare results. The US spends far more per person on medical health care than other major developed nations. $8,500 was spent on health care per person in the US in 2011. Norway spent $5,700 per person, coming in second among ten other significant industrialised countries in terms of spending. At $3,200 per person, New Zealand had the lowest healthcare spending.
Sadly, despite spending far more than the rest of the globe, the United States does not even come close to having the greatest healthcare system globally. In June, research by The Commonwealth Fund examined this alarming truth. The United States was placed last overall among 11 major industrialised nations in the report “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally” as of 2013. The Commonwealth Fund has already observed this pattern in publications released in 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2010.
The survey also showed that compared to other nations, the United States had inferior health results. A private foundation called The Commonwealth Fund was established in 1918. Specifically for the most vulnerable members of society, it seeks to “create a high-performing health care system that provides better access, higher quality, and more efficiency.” It does this, in part, by providing financing for studies looking at healthcare-related topics.
How the US performs
The authors of the Commonwealth Fund research evaluated population health, access, efficiency, equity, and quality as five essential components of the operation of the healthcare system. On four of these factors, the United States came in last or very close to last, and on the fifth, it came in between. A deeper examination of the report’s specifics uncovers several alarming shortcomings with regard to each of these features of the American healthcare system in comparison to other nations.
Public health
The ability of the general population to live long, healthy, and productive lives is the ultimate indicator of how well a nation’s healthcare system is performing. For many people, the U.S. is an abject failure in this aspect. The authors of the report looked at 3 crucial metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the country’s healthcare system: infant mortality (the number of deaths per 1,000 live births), healthy life expectancy (good health at age 60), and preventable mortality (deaths that could have been avoided with prompt and effective care).
On the measure of healthy lives, the United States came in last on the first 2 outcomes & second-to-last on the third, earning an overall last-place rating. On the total scale, Sweden and France came in top and second place, respectively. Other experts, including the esteemed Institute of Medicine, agree that the United States has the worst health results among major developed nations (IOM). The IOM found that the U.S. usually had lower health outcomes and higher premature-death rates in all age categories & income levels than the average among 16 high-income countries in its 2013 study, “U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.”
Efficiency
The authors of the research examined the ratio of total national health spending to GDP as well as the percentage of health care spending allocated to health administration and insurance in order to assess efficiency. The U.K. and Sweden were rated as having the most effective healthcare systems, while the U.S. was determined to be the least effective.
Of all the study’s participating nations, the United States spends the most on health care as a proportion of GDP. Additionally, it spends more on insurance and health management.
In comparison to almost every other nation, Americans spend more time on paperwork and disagreements over medical bills and insurance claims than patients and physicians do. Additionally, patients in the United States are far more likely than those in other nations to have repeated medical exams, subjecting them to a lot of unneeded fees and risks of injury.
Quality
The quality of healthcare in the United States is the only “positive” news to be found in the Commonwealth Fund study. High-quality care is characterised by the report’s authors as being efficient, secure, coordinated, and patient-centred. The U.S. placed fifth overall on this criterion of healthcare system performance, after Norway, the U.K., and the U.K.
The United States came in third place for effective health care. At compared to other countries, the United States excels in offering preventive care, such as recommendations on nutrition and exercise.
However, it performed badly when it came to chronically sick patients who were denied recommended tests, treatments, or follow-up care due to cost, placing last on this measure of healthcare quality. In terms of how safe its healthcare system is, the United States came in seventh, behind the United Kingdom, which came in first. Medical mistakes that occurred during therapy were taken into account when calculating safety. Patients in the U.S. were more likely than patients in most other nations to obtain the improper medicine or dose at a pharmacy or while hospitalised (ranked ninth), to have inaccurate findings for a diagnostic or lab test (ranked eighth), or to wait longer to learn about aberrant test results (ranked ninth). The safety of the patient is obviously threatened by each of these situations.