The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.Health care reform will help with this, but we still have decades of improvements to make. Meanwhile, let's look at what's gone on just 3 years ago:
"As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it," Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters in a telephone briefing.
Previous reports by the nonprofit fund, which conducts research into healthcare performance and promotes changes in the U.S. system, have been heavily used by policymakers and politicians pressing for healthcare reform.
Davis said she hoped health reform legislation passed in March would lead to improvements.
The current report uses data from nationally representative patient and physician surveys in seven countries in 2007, 2008, and 2009. It is available here.
In 2007, health spending was $7,290 per person in the United States, more than double that of any other country in the survey.
Australians spent $3,357, Canadians $3,895, Germans $3,588, the Netherlands $3,837 and Britons spent $2,992 per capita on health in 2007. New Zealand spent the least at $2,454.
This is a big rise from the Fund's last similar survey, in 2007, which found Americans spent $6,697 per capita on healthcare in 2005, or 16 percent of gross domestic product.
"We rank last on safety and do poorly on several dimensions of quality," Schoen told reporters. "We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost. And we also do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care."
And over the last 30 years.
Remember, the Republicans want to go back to this system, because they think it's the best on Earth.
What are the waiting periods, quality of care, and choices for those other countries :-)
ReplyDeleteNo system is perfect, our only flaw is cost.
All those 7s in our column are a bad thing, Waffles. Cost is not the only flaw, just the largest.
ReplyDelete"The survey didn’t look at the treatment of serious conditions. Waiting weeks or months for chemotherapy is not held against a health-care system"
ReplyDelete"Waiting time for non-elective, serious surgery did not count, though that is precisely where socialist systems do the worst"
"The Commonwealth Fund has repeatedly had issues with cherry picking benchmarks, choosing non-medical benchmarks, using questionable benchmarks, and attempting to find a link between low spending and efficiency."
I'm sure there are plenty more places to find info blowing holes through this system