The US spends more then any country on healthcare but we still suck at helping with access to care that is needed – PB/TK
U.S. health system has worst access for the poor among 11 wealthy nations, study finds – By Cathie Anderson / July 14 2017
Even as Senate Republicans renew efforts to pass a bill expected to raise health-insurance premiums beyond the means of millions of Americans, new research being released today shows that income inequality already limits the poor’s access to care more profoundly in the United States than it does in 10 other wealthy nations.
The New York-based Commonwealth Fund will share this finding and other information from its research today as part of a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. In the article, leaders of the 99-year-old nonprofit foundation, which studies how the U.S. can achieve a high-performing health care system, will examine how the U.S. can move from last to first among its high-income peers.
“As background, it is often said that the U.S. has the best health-care in the world, but there is limited evidence to support that claim,” said Eric Schneider, senior vice president for policy and research at the fund and the study’s lead author. “The overall performance of the U.S. health care system ranks last among the 11 countries included in this study. This result is due to poorer performance in several areas, including access, administrative efficiency, equity and health outcomes.”
Yet Schneider said the United States spends far more on health care than other wealthy nations do, and that spending has grown more rapidly than any other country’s in the study. Since 1980, U.S. health care spending as a percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product has grown by 16.6 percent. Australia ranks lowest in this category at 9 percent. Spending grew by 10.9 percent in the Netherlands, 9.9 percent in the U.K., 10 percent in Canada, 11.1 percent in France.
