US Health System Ranks Last Compared to Other Countries: Studies
WASHINGTON - The US health care system ranks last among other major rich countries for quality, access and efficiency, according to two studies released Tuesday by a health care think tank.
The studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that the United States, which has the most expensive health system in the world, underperforms consistently relative to other countries and differs most notably in the fact that Americans have no universal health insurance coverage. 
“The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a ‘medical home’ for patients,” said Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis.
“Our failure to ensure health insurance for all and encourage stable, long-term ties between physicians and patients shows in our poor performance on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and health outcomes.”
In “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care”, the study focused on interviews with physicians and patients in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States who were asked to speak about their experiences and views on their health systems.
The US ranked last in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician.
“The US spends twice what the average industrialized country spends on health care but we’re clearly not getting value for the money,” Davis told AFP.
She also noted that 45 million Americans, or 15 percent of the US population, have no health insurance, which contributes to the country’s medical woes.
The United States is also far behind in adopting modern health information technology, which translates into spiralling costs and poor care.
“We pride ourselves on being advanced on so many areas of technology but it’s not the case on health information technology,” Davis said. “Other countries have just moved ahead.”
Britain got the top score in overall ranking among the countries in the study, followed by Germany. New Zealand and Australia tied for third followed by Canada and the United States.
The second study delves into why health costs in the United States are so much higher than in eight other countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
The study, “Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data,” found that even though the US spends the most on publicly and privately financed health insurance, its citizens had the most potential years of life lost due to circulatory and respiratory diseases as well as diabetes.
“This study blows a lot of myths about the US health system,” Davis said. “We spend three times what the average country spends on a day of hospital care and we also spend twice what the average country spends on prescription medication.”
Health care is likely to be a prominent issue in the 2008 US presidential elections with various candidates already promising to tackle rising costs and the burden placed on big business to provide health insurance.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.
Just in time for Michael Moore’s new documentary, SICKO!
Imagine a system that gets nearly as much money per month as we pay in taxes, and pays our politicians nearly as much as the government does. That is what the insurance companies are today. Do not support the system advocated by Edwards, Obama, or Clinton, it is merely mandatory health insurance. Choose single payer! Choose Kucinich.
Yay, Kucinich!!! He is the only one with a plan, a plan to unite us, instead of dividing us.
We can’t afford this anymore! We have got to go with Kucinich’s plan!
I have no doubt that someone will follow me with a post:
“It’s the Jews.”
You must be confusing Commondreams with Iraq-war.ru, or occasionally, informationclearinghouse.info. Most of us very clearly distinguish the policies of the state of Israel, it’s conservative US friends, and AIPAC, from Judaiism.
Kucinich’s plan alone is reason enough to back him. Here’s a tedious but true fact. Americans spend 11-12 times what Costa Ricans spend on healthcare, but get the same life expectancy for it. Forget comparisons with developed economies, the American system is Third World (with apologies to my Costa Rican friends).
“Why Obama, Hillary, Edwards, Romney etc. Don’t Support Single Payer”
http://www.healthcare-now.org/showstory.php?nid=394
“Universal Health Care” does not imply “Single Payer”
Insurance companies raise rates on both ends with their malpractice insurance, (which has skyrocketed despite malpractice payouts remaining flat) and with the horrible increases we’ve seen in just the past few years with health insurance.
The insurance companies are one of the major sponsors of the republican party, and in return, they pass laws like the $750,000 cap on payouts here in Texas.
Insurance companies are always on the side of the rich because it amounts to a poor person tax for being a high risk. (i.e. likely to be a victim)
We need to get them out of the picture, and Hillary, Obama, and Edwards will not do that. They will instead cement the insurance companies position by making it mandatory to buy their product. (Do you know that here in Texas, if you are rich enough to put $30,000 in an escrow account, you don’t have to buy auto insurance?)
There is currently a bill presented by Conyers that has 70 co-sponsers. It is H.R. 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act. This is a single payor/Medicare for all plan. Please do not confuse universal health INSURANCE legislation (lining the posckets of insurance companies) with single payer.
Please go to the following site and take action! Get your Congress folks to co-sponser and support HR 676.
http://www.healthcare-now.org/action/write.htm
Thanks
Seems like a quarter of US citizens are hell bent on dismanlting whats left of our social system, another quarter would like to have better services and fianlly, half the people in this country don’t even participate. So why do we ever have the notion that we could ever aquire a universal health plan. Vote and participate
Until the insurance companies are taken out of this equation, we will NEVER have good health care. They are the single greatest cause for our sky-rocketing costs (for their profits) and the bean-counter mentality that denies coverage whenever possible.
For EACH of the candidates, we need to have a running tally of how much money each takes from BOTH insurance corporations and pharmaceuticals. Recent votes AGAINST the peoples’ best interests shows this in NOT only the Republicans in their pocket. Numerous corporate-controlled Democrats are working against us too.
Yes, Kucinich’s plan is the one all the others should be adopting immediately…maybe they will if it’s brought up often enough. Call, write, e-mail, blog. Get the discussion underway and hold their feet to the fire.
###
Sad to say but the Harper government (government by stealth) in Canada is aspiring to impose the American system upon Canadians covertly through his minister of health referred to by many in his home province of Ontario as TWO TIER TONY. Peer reviewed studies consistently show the benefits of a single tier system in terms of better quality of health delivery (lower mortality rates compared to private for profit) and more economical. In addition and despite claims from extreme right wing groups disguised as think tanks, health care in Canada is not spiralling out of control. Having said that the increases in health care costs stem from the ballooning out of control costs of the 100% private for profit pharmaceutical industry. Most Canadians don’t even have monthly premiums. Can’t get much better than that but the private for profit companies are salivating with all that money floating around and are seductively hovering over elected “market knows best” ideologues who are submitting to their charm$. When it comes to health care, NEED, NOT GREED should be mantra.
Our illnesses are commodities … what do you expect?
I’m waiting for one of the markets to start offering hedge funds for numbers of deaths on any given day.
We live in a country that is very ill … with greed.
scottdw - yes it seems as if everything is a commodity. Wow, this makes no sense.
IAH,
buffalo_ken
H.Res. 333 - Impeach VP (the “d”-fool)
See more and read About the Conyers/Kucinich plan:
http://kucinich.us/issues/universalhealth.php
AND–while you’re there–dig deeper, learn more about D.K. and help get him and his platform and ideas out into the mainstream public and media!!!
“We have established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived, and people are sicker than ever!
We cure NOTHING!!!
We heal NOTHING!!!”
—George C. Scott in “THE HOSPITAL” (1971)
If you get a chance, rent this movie. Sadly, in over 35 years we have made no improvement over the conditions depicted in this great Paddy Chayefsky flick. But then such is the power of money to corrupt individuals and politicians and stonewall the political process.
Free Universal healthcare is a human right, a civil right and an inalienable right.
Isn’t it about time the USA begins to become a civilized nation?
Retrain insurance workers to become healthcare workers
“How will single payer deal with 12 million illegal aliens using hospital emergency rooms for free?”
With all the money they save by not being raped by the insurance companies.
“How will single payer deal with 12 million illegal aliens using hospital emergency rooms for free?”
They won’t have to use emergency rooms anymore, they can go to ordinary family doctors or clinics. They only go to emergency rooms because of laws prohibiting kicking them out out due to lack of insurance.
And, humanitarian considerations aside, most illegal aliens pay full social security, medicare, and federal income taxes at their jobs (but get no refunds). So, why shouldn’t they be entitled to benefits under single payer healthcare?
macchendra,
here is another point you might ponder. In many cases when U.S. citizens get sick, have an accident, or have a baby in a foreign country, they get better care than in the U.S. and are treated for free.
Now I know why the Statue of Liberty is a French immigrant(from the American point of view).
Perhaps the Statue is there as a reminder of the fact that Liberty cannot be monopolised by any single nation, nor can it be the property of some oligarchy. Also, this Phantom of Liberty is entirely dependent on the realisation of the incarnation of the Ever-Elusive Spectre of Justice.
For the time being - let’s see what Sarkozy will do - people in France can at least simply eat ‘frites’ in France without calling them ‘French frites’, or ‘Homeland frites’, or ‘Freedom Frites’ or ‘Un-American Frites’.
I am the myself the child of so-called ‘gastarbeiders’[working class ‘guest-workers’] who came from Portugal to the Netherlands in the 1960’s. I have health insurance, my parents have health insurance, my friends, fellow-students: I do not know a single person who does not have health insurance. Apparently, there are about 400,000 persons - 2.5 percent of Dutch population - in the Netherlands who fail to pay their health insurance fees (complicated changes in Dutch fiscal administration in combination with the difficulties that some people, such as alcoholics, have with regard to acting rationally lie at the basis of many of those cases), yet all of these people still have access to healthcare.
Well, it is not as if this is paradise over here. We have our own sets of problems, certainly. In my opinion, the last three Balkenende governments were characterised by provincial xenophobia - especially towards ‘Islamic’(it is often assumed that, for example, any Turk is ‘a Muslim’: the eye-of-the-beholder-factor plays a role here), brown-skinned or black-skinned immigrants -, and there certainly were scores of asylum seekers jailed for protracted periods, and who experienced dangerous (sometimes fatal or damaging) difficulties with regard to getting access to health care. Such policies toward asylum seekers, however, met fierce and effective opposition from many town and city councils, journalists, some of the political parties, militant members of a variety of churches and, finally, activists of a number of organisations - some founded in the last few years - that are specialised in assisting asylum seekers whose rights are threatened or denied.
I don’t know. We could make things better, but Lord protect us from people who want to transform planet Earth into some kind of perfectly paradisiacal Utopia with Blairite Big Brother governance, and the whole show framed by the hollowness of a dead democracy-fetish. We have already had experiences with such Utopia-conjuring chaps in Europe(e.g. Lenin).
If someone were to ask me to sum up what has been happening in the last six years, and if I were to have absolute artistic freedom to express my vision….I’d ship the Statue of Liberty to Guantanamo bay and have it apply for political asylum. I wonder whether we’d ever hear anything from her again.
Yeah, Dying for a Dollar is most definitely the American Way. You work yourself to death for it. The economic systems sucks it right out of you. Hell, in America, Death is a stock on Wallstreet, Big Pharmas best friend! But we just keep on walking around with those big, dumb flag waving stars in out eyes thinking OUR WAY is the best way and no other way could ever be better. And Kuchinich? God bless him and I love the man for being the ONLY politician running that has a true sense of vision for this country. But in the United States where
‘Greed is the Creed’, I’m afraid he doesn’t stand a chance, more’s the pity.
US healthcare is ridiculously expensive and ridiculously outmoded and just plain BAD.
I have been living in Mexico for 15 years–here in the Third World we have it all over you guys in terms of quality of routine care and it’s CHEAP.
Whoa everyone! Hold up on the the enthused comments about a single payer plan. I have just one question for all you who support ’single payer. How will a single payer plan address the issue of low quality in America’s health care system?
How will a single payer plan address and stop the flow of clients and payment to low quality providers who should be out of business for the terrible errors they commit every day?
How will a single payer plan address the fragmented broken nature of a system that often sends patients in a dizzying circle of trips to primary care givers, specialists, labs, clinics and then inundates payers with countless, indeed truckloads of bills?
How will a single payer plan address the lack of information on where the high quality providers are located? They do exist and are available in the long run at lower costs then the low quality providers who end up making their patients return again and again for mistakes made from the final diagnosis til the coffin closes on the unfortunate victim.
The only reason to advocate a single payer system is if you are interested in falling prey to the terrible system we already have. A single payer system will not change anything in the overall nature of our current system.
Please then, address the issue of how a single payer system will suddenly make all health care providers of the same, equally excellent quality.
What hurts the quality medicine in the US is largely the lack of access for the uninsured and the lack of what insurance will pay for as well as the demands of profit driven HMOs. Single payer will address much of that and while there is always room for improvement, medicine in the US will be better. There also need to be a restoration of funding for mental health and social services.
The solution is single payer universal health care. Everyone in, no one left out, and private health insurance companies are are not allowed. In other words no one can buy their way ahead of the line. http://www.pnhp.org Check out this website and become educated by physicians who support single payer.
Many comments above endorsed Kucinich as the panacea for our health care problems. I even agree with those statments. However corporate America is already going out of its way to discredit as well as disqualify Kucinich from running for president. Even his nomination for the democratic candidacy is as long a shot as Nader getting elected. Just a pipe dream.
I once emailed the CDC to ask them why they aren’t informing people about such remedies as Echinacea. No response.
Fortunately we are able to rely on ‘herbal remedies’ to alleviate total reliability on the health care system in this country.(Provided they don’t bust everyone who smokes medicinal cannabis)
With that being said, when we make comments to legislators, be sure to remind them that capitalism only capitulates profiting off those who suffer. For the masses to really make an impact, learn how to use what nature provided as far as curing.
Gluttonous behavior produces gluttonous results. This is how our country seems to maintain the health care industry in the first place.
*The above comment is just an outside the box look into trying to find alternatives to relying on our government for anything.
‘If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?” Tuco from “Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
Kucinich is fourth, after Hillary, Obama, and Edwards.
Hillary, Obama, and Edwards are weak on everything, keep chipping away. We’ve got months. Get another democrat every day. It can be achieved by everyone who wants it if we all take action.
When do you think America will catch up with the rest of the westernized democratic world????
I would appreciate it if someone can give a reason why big business (and business in general) have never rebelled against having to provide health insurance for their employees. I know the answer is going to be “follow the money”, because any time there is a major question in this country, the answer is ALWAYS, ALWAYS MONEY. That said, what exactly is the write-off, tax reduction policy, etc. that makes it worth their while for all business to subsidize a single industry (the health insurance industry.) My guess is that there is a tax break or something of the kind of epic proportions involved, which means that we the taxpayers are ALREADY footing the bill for universal health care — it’s just not public knowledge yet. There is no way on earth that IBM, GM, Google, Microsoft, etc. will shell out millions — heck, probably billions — on benefits for their employees in order to sustain Blue Cross and Kaiser, and all the other insurers and health HMO providers. etal. The only other thing I can think of is if the boards of directors are all somehow interlocking, so that some percentage of the mega profits of the health insurance/HMO is funneled back to the other supporting industries.
The giant mega corps are not in the business of benefitting any entity other than their execs and stockholders. So why do they do ANYTHING to insure their employees, just to keep other industries afloat?
Don’t give me the rationale that they have to compete for workers; it would be much easier in that case for them all to collude to DROP paying for health insurance rather than continue to do it. Somehow, they all must belinked together so that they offset the losses to their own benefit.
Capitalistic healthcare is in essence an oxymoron especially with the immoral behavior corporations have exhibited lately. Essentially they are sticking their guns to our head and saying your money or your life. It really boils down to the profit motive.
Profits must be distantly removed from our health care by any means necessary. Yes it must be legislated out.
It says clearly in the preamble of our Constitution that one of the main purposes of our Government is to “provide for the general welfare”. There can be no better application of this principle than providing health care for all our citizens.
That means lobbying must be outlawed to eliminate the choke hold corporations have on our government.
Corporate influence is the illness that that is destroying the health of our great nation.
The people of our nation should be filing a giant class action lawsuit against our government for failing to enforce our own constitutional principles.
Your comments are absolutely correct. Let me provide two examples of the horror of our system:
1. On the telephone at one of my jobs having nothing to do with health care and not expecting any medical problems from our customers: “How are you, Mrs (Blank)?”.
2. Mrs. Blank: “Not so good. I have this pain in my chest and it won’t go away. Took bicarb but it don’t help.”
3. Me: “How old are you, Mrs. (Blank)? And how long have you had this pain and have you had it before?”
4. Mrs. Blank: “I’m 84, dear. Yes, I have it often but this time it is lasting very long.”
5. Me: “Mrs. Blank, can you call your doctor? Can you get to the hospital?”
6. Mrs. Blank: “No, M’am. Doctor not open today. ER– is far too expensive.”
7. Me: “Do you have kids who live close? What about an ambulance?”
8. Mrs. Blank: “Kids live in another state. I don’ have the $800 for an ambulance. It will go away. Don’t you worry none. I’be been living with this for 1 or 2 years and I know I will die here in my house. That’s O.K. I know it will be O.K.”
9. Me: “Yes, M’am. You take care now, you hear.”
[Because of the telecommunications system I’m on I can do nothing! I don’t even know who she is except for a last name.]
Next scene: Husband has vague but disturbing complaints seeming to relate to cardiopulmonary problems. Dr. asks for 6 medical tests:
1. CBC with lipid fractionation and 12-item metabolic panel.
2. CXray, AP and Lat
3. echocardiogram
4. Cat scan with and without contrast of abdomen and pelvis.
WE have no insurance for him as he is a Permanent Resident and has not earned 40 quarters of SS, so no Medicare: COST: almost $6,000 for those 4 items.
Last time we had a big outlay it was for $70,000 cash because the stupid, literally, doctor thought my husband had “adult onset Crohn’s Disease”. My husband had a viral infection.
If I can prevent it, I will never, never go to an MD again and, considering how filthy the hospitals are around here, never go to a hospital again, either.
Have you ever gone to a Nurse PRactitioner? Generally they are great, very well educated with years of prior nursing experience before going on to become an NP and very people oriented. If they have Rx privileges, they are great doctor substitutes. My wonderful state, PA, shackles NPs like a pig in a harness because this state is owned by the AMA and the pharmaceutical companies. You see, NPs tend to treat the whole person and not just dispense pills after a 10 minutes visit dominated by “The Doctor”.
I think we need to shop for services and shop for hospitals if we have time. The system we have is like going to a garage and getting our car fixed and just as personal.
Salud!
Bush wants everyone to be responsible for their own health care. He can start by eliminating the free health care that his family and politicians receive. They can certainly afford to be responsible.
This is a cruel administration. I was working for a company where they threatened to tarnish people’s reputations by writing them up on bogus charges just so they could eliminate health care expenses.
The high cost of health care along with the high cost of gasoline is blamed on the consumer.
The government does not seem to care the people who are dying are the wants financing the free ride for everyone else.
People cannot be responsible if things are unaffordable.
“This is a cruel administration”
Yes, that pretty well sums it up. Perfectly, in fact.
Conventional medicine deals with sickness, and having someone else pay for that isn’t going to help, seeing docs trained in health care will. Go find a good DC or ND, and you’ll be better off.
In health care, global relations, and many other areas the U.S. IS the third world or heading there as fast we can.
PLEASE do NOT retrain insurance workers as health care workers. Anyone who can honestly and without pause state repeatedly over the course of several months that surgery to correct an anal fistula is “purely cosmetic” has absolutely NO BUSINESS making decisions about anyone else’s health or health care. Nor do bean counters who think that one PT session for “pain management” can replace PT for joint stability and strengthening or who think that Med A for $300/mo for a minimum of six months should be used in place of Med B at $400/mo for a maximum of 3 months because “Med A is cheaper”.
Also, I’m going to guess that anyone who honestly believes that Medicare in anything remotely resembling its current condition or Medicaid are “functional” or “adequate” to work as a single payor for universal health care or to even absorb the “uninsurable” in a system that mandates everyone to have “insurance” has never had to use either and doesn’t really know anyone that’s used either. Without MAJOR changes - including much better quality oversight and better access to much more competent doctors - the only thing either is really good for is making sure the sick and disabled stay sick and disabled (or die).
But something MUST be done. It is absolutely unconscionable that people are forced to endure things like becoming officially disabled (in the totally unable to work sense) just to get “insurance” to access “PUBLIC health”, suffering without access to care that’s necessary for management of a chronic condition or dying or watching family die because of lack of care in a system with as many resources that spends as much money as our system does. Our society already pays dearly - way too dearly.
At least you are safe for now from cheaper Canadian drugs
A couple messages seemed to think that doing “natural medicine” (whatever that is) is the answer to our problems. Supposedly it is the greedy capitalistic pigs who are responsible for our medical system’s failures. Surprise, surprise, but those same greedy capitalistic pigs are the ones selling you the bottles of natural herbs or whatever at massively inflated prices, that are “magical cures but we can’t say that because of the mean old FDA.” They are the ones that fight tooth and nail to avoid having their products tested for efficacy and even if they actually contain any of the herbs that they claim. The Natural Remedy business is responsible for a big share of the political donations that are warping our system of governance and are making a few people rich off the credulity of the masses.
I was a RN for 24 years (before my lungs and oxygen 24/7 stopped me working).
It can be done.
We are the biggest free country.
Maybe right now it’s not that great, but until the recent past we’ve had one of the best economies.
If Canada and England can do it, at all, then we can, too.
There are places where it has been done, but on a small scale.
My first employer was Charlotte Memorial Hospital & Medical Center, now the Carolina’s Hospital. At the time, it was an 800 bed facility with intenstive, cardiac, respiratory, neonatal, pediatric, and neurological “Intensive Care Units.”
They did cardiac bypass surgery, and kidney transplants.
They had a obstetricial high risk unit.
They had a psychiatric unit.
They had a small burn unit.
They also ran several pro-rated fee discount clinics: well baby, pediatric, OB GYN, etc., for as little as 25 cents a visit.
People went in, with NO INSURANCE, and got TREATED.
Why?
Because CMHMC had a CONTRACT with Mecklinburg County, to treat the county indigent. And treat, they did.
Between 1980 and 1982, when I was in my ADN program at Central Piedmont Community College, the NUMBER ONE reason for permanent colostomy in Mecklinburg county is what they called “the Charlotte gun and knife club”…in other words, biker gang wars.
THEY got treated, with NO insurance.
I don’t know what they do NOW, but I know what they did THEN.
If a county containing Charlotte (North Carolina) in it can do it, the USA can, too.
I don’t know what criteria the surveyors used or what they were smoking.
BRITAIN FIRST????? When the criteria are timeliness of care? (My friend had to wait four years for her varicose vein operation) quality of
care? (She said the hospital was dirtier than a Greek toilet, MRSA is rampant and I won’t go in to some of my British colleague’s medical ignorance and how it was impossible to get some of my patients urgently needed treatment in the British system). These studies are generally heavily weighted on whether there is universal coverage and life expectancy. Universal coverage is not the same as good care. They never take into consideration the fact that any uninsured impoverished American (and/or illegal alien) can walk into any emergency room and by law must be treated i.e. has access to the best care in the world. Believe me, American care, despite its faults (and no doctor is God) is still way above Britain. I have worked as an M.D. for over a decade in both systems making me a qualified observer, not some statistician with an agenda. Life expectancy, they do not take into consideration the lifestyle and diets of the various populations.
I am a 53-year-old person with no health insurance. I’ve had to delay getting what, at my age, should be yearly doctor visits and tests until I have the money to pay. I tried to get charity care, but because of one freelance writing check, I had to get a profit and loss statement from an accountant to have a chance to qualify. I couldn’t afford to get one. Talk about “Nickle and Dimed.” I finally arranged for a monthly payment plan with one medical entity, only to get bills from laboratories and “readers” of the results, etc., etc. It’s ridiculous. Universal, single payer health care–yes. Maybe a class action lawsuit from all the people who have been damaged by lack of timely care(as well as survivors of those who died for the same reasons)would do the trick.
If Universal Health Care is ever passed everyone will have health coverage but there will be no more doctors to take care of them. If you don’t believe me do your own survey. Call the doctors in your area and ask if they accept medicaid. You will soon discover that very few doctors accept the government sponsored health plans. Why is this? Because doctors that see patients with the government sponsored plans lose money. It cost the practice money to see medicaid patients. Do you really think any type of Universal Health Care will be any better? No way! If Universal Health care is ever passed it will force doctors to open cash-only practices and only the wealthy will be able to afford to see a doctor.
I’ve heard of the problems afflicting Britain’s NHS, but would most British want to trade their system for the U.S. healthcare system? I’ve seen filthy American hospitals as well.
As for doctors who accept cash only, it’s already happening, and mostly in reaction to HMOs. I think universal healthcare deserves a chance in the U.S. Will doctors just leave the country if it’s implemented? I doubt it.