Despite Americans paying nearly double that of other nations, the US fares poorly in list of 10 countries
The United States health system ranked dead last in an international comparison of 10 peer nations, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund.
In spite of Americans paying nearly double that of other countries, the system performed poorly on health equity, access to care and outcomes.
“I see the human toll of these shortcomings on a daily basis,” said Dr Joseph Betancourt, the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation with a focus on healthcare research and policy.
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The fund said the US would need to expand insurance coverage and make “meaningful” improvements on the amount of healthcare expenses patients pay themselves; minimize the complexity and variation in insurance plans to improve administrative efficiency; build a viable primary care and public health system; and invest in social wellbeing, rather than thrust problems of social inequity onto the health system.
Some people achieve some sadistic satisfaction from denying poor people health care, even if it cost extra to themselves!?
In USA there is a sentiment that looks like they are trying to exterminate the poor, by letting them suffer and die, instead of trying to build a better more humane society for all.To me, its much more that the rich don’t want to pay for the healthcare of the people who earn all of their money for them, rather than active sadism.
More, devoid of empathy and not really seeing them as fellow humans, deserving of basic rights like not dying of poverty. Especially if it costs them money.
I disagree, when they prevent a system that benefit all including themselves, they are actively acting like sadists who want to see the suffering of those who cannot afford to pay.
Each to their own but, to me, rich people would make far more, personally, with the American system. I 100% get how you came to your conclusion though. I’m not saying sadism wouldn’t make sense or anything.
The concept of “rich” only exists in contrast to “poor”. So you need one for the other
They literally are indeed trying to exterminate the poor.
That’s how I see it, and half the population wants that.
There’s a lot of miserable fucks out there due to a mix of leaded gas fumes, childhood trauma, and religious/political brainwashing.
Its better than Canada’s…
That’s some medical grade bullshit. Please seek medical attention if you can afford it.
I waited less in American hospitals than in Canadian hospitals for care
Literally isn’t.
No no no, that’s simply wrong.
US healthcare system is the best in the world, at doing what it’s designed to do. Issue here is that they’re measuring it on care provide vs cost, while the US system is optimized for profits.
If they instead ranked the results by which system generated the most private profits the US would be first.
The line I’ve heard is
best in the world for those who can afford it
But medicine is still an industry that benefits from economy of scale. It still benefits from public sector R&D. It still benefits from robust safety regulations and enforcement of best practices.
We’ve been chipping away at all of that. Hell, we’re straight up closing hospitals and clinics all over the country, purely because so few of them are economically viable when pitted against a ruthless private insurance market.
If they instead ranked the results by which system generated the most private profits
There are sectors that bring in big profits, but they’re extracting those profits from the sectors that deliver the medicine.
The snake is eating it’s own tail. This isn’t a long term strategy for profit. Every quarterly cycle leans harder on Medicaid and Medicare as the private systems fail.
The goal has been reached
Eh, but how do we rank if you are flush with disposable income?
Still pretty shitty. I.e. you’re still paying more for worse care unless you’re like, literally in the 1%
Turns out a profit motive is not the best system for everything in the world. Who would have guessed?
I think it’s more of a problem with over regulation. The U.S. healthcare system suffers from a lack of market freedom. While some may argue for more government intervention or even a single-payer system, many of the inefficiencies could be resolved by removing excessive regulation and encouraging more competition. A true free-market approach, with more choices and price transparency, could lower costs and improve care quality—something over-regulation has failed to achieve.
A capitalistic system will maximize for one thing and one thing only: Profit.
If anything else improves, such as service, cost, or wait times, it will only by as a byproduct of increasing profit. If there are easier, faster, or cheaper ways of increasing profit (such as cutting staff and having
customerspatients wait longer) then those will be done instead. The FDA exists because otherwise capitalistic companies will put customers health and lives in danger because it is more profitable to do so and pay out potential lawsuits than it is to make sure safety regulations are in place in the first place.The only way to maximize something other the profit, such as customer service, is through regulation. That is why monopolies are illegal: if a customer doesn’t have a choice you can charge them as much as you want, and take as long as you want, and perform as poorly as you want, and they still have to use your service because they have no other choice. When a
customerpatient needs to go to the hospital they don’t have the luxury of “shopping around”, they have a medical emergency and need help now. So without regulation a profit motivated hospital can charge whatever they want, especially considering nobody discusses prices before doing life saving operations.“lack of market freedom” is not the reason 1 Tylenol pill at a hospital costs you $15.
“Excessive regulation” is not the reason patients are charged $40 for crying.
“Lack of competition” is not the reason asking for an itemized bill will save you money. “It’s estimated that about 60 percent of medical bills that are issued have errors” (I can’t think of any other industry that would consider that acceptable.)What specific regulations would you remove from hospitals, and how would the absence of those regulations directly help
customerspatients?The US is last place in the linked article while having the most profit driven hospital system of the countries compared. Making it even more profit driven is not going to improve the thing
customerspatients need improved.
It would probably be fine if everyone agreed to play by the rules, but they dont, and the US is terrible at enforcing them (or specifically, chooses not too, and doesnt impose new laws to stop loopholing)
But the administrative bullshit, and the other potential problems are exactly why other countries went for universal healthcare 🤷♂️
Not defending the broken US healthcare system but this article is shit when it includes firearm deaths and opioid overdoses into its metrics to grade the overall healthcare system.
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Why is that?
Oddly, it seems to be causing deaths. What’re the odds?
You think firearm deaths indicate a poor healthcare system?
Mental health is health, and treatment for these conditions are healthcare.
The U.S. health care system is a failure because of the continued existence of health insurance companies over the more streamlined approach of Medicare for All.
Also this graph is hilarious, albeit depressing.
Actually, many of those countries don’t have systems similar to Medicare for All. Netherlands, supposedly second in this list, has a mostly privatized system with mandatory insurance, so does Switzerland. France and Germany have semi-public and private health insurance companies. The US has bigger (and different) problems than merely the existence of health insurance companies.
Not really true about Netherlands:
The Netherlands has a dual-level system. All primary and curative care (i.e. the family doctor service and hospitals and clinics) is financed from private mandatory insurance. Long term care for the elderly, the dying, the long term mentally ill etc. is covered by social insurance funded from earmarked taxation under the provisions of the Algemene Wet Bijzondere Ziektekosten, which came into effect in 1968. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_the_Netherlands#:~:text=Health insurance in the Netherlands,long-term nursing and care.
See the social insurance aspect? The largest financial burden to the Healthcare system is usually a person’s last 5 years of life, so they’ve socialized the expensive parts of healthcare and privatized the cheaper stuff.
For Switzerland:
The insured person pays the insurance premium for the basic plan. If a premium is too high compared to the person’s income, the government gives the insured person a cash subsidy to help pay for the premium.[8]
This isn’t something done in every US state, to be clear. In some states it’s very hard to access healthcare if you can’t afford the premium. This lack of coverage often creates a heavier burden on healthcare systems because people are uninsured.
The Wlz (which replaced the AWBZ) covers only a minority of total health care costs. Expenses were €29 bln in 2023. “Mostly privatized” is accurate.
Both the Netherlands and Switzerland have universal health care systems and negligible rates of lack of insurance. My point is just that private health insurance isn’t the (only) problem, as these counterexamples show.
Oh yeah? We still have more guns.
/s
It’s helpful to know that if I ever leave the US, I’ll have better healthcare. I don’t even need to spend any time researching that aspect.
No, you actually won’t. I went to Canada, had an accident and had to wait 8 hours in the emergency room to get care because apparently I wasn’t dying
As an American, I had to pay $1000 for this privilege
I meant moving to another country permanently, not traveling, but good to know that the US system can reach out and punish me if I have the audacity to travel out of network. :(
You had to go to Canada for that? I had that same experience right here in the states.
Well, almost. It cost me $1500, and that was after my insurance paid down the majority of the bill.
It was four hours in the US. Trust me, staying in the hospital until 1 am is way different than sitting until the morning in a plastic chair
I have definitely done 8 hours in a US ER waiting room before. If you haven’t, count yourself lucky.
Yes, I believe it. But when I went to urgent care with my ex, they got her in in about an hour.
Overall, my experience with the US system is that it’s on average faster than the Canadian one if you need urgent care.
How far down the list of non-peer nations are we?
Pretty far down
For a laugh (and cry), you can have a look at which countries are above the US in terms of life expectancy. It includes the likes of Maldives, Costa Rica, Panama and Oman.
“Yeah, but Socialism and Communism!!!”
I mean I can hope, but it seems unlikely
Israel can afford universal healthcare. But the United States? Where would we ever find the money for that?
The UK did it immediately after WW2 when our economy was destroyed. We were in much debt, we didn’t finish paying America back until 2006. However, apparently, the country we paid all that money to cant afford it?
You have to admire the brazennes of the lie though.
When we find the military and give weapons to countries like Israel and many others across the world, it raises the stock prices of military contractors and congress gets more personal wealth.
A public option for healthcare would lower stock prices for health care companies and insurance companies which congress is also heavily invested in.
Universal healthcare paid from the taxes of the wealthy. Cmon. Asking for a few million friends. 😣
But the US system ranks first in wealth extraction from people to billionaires, so it’s working as intended.
Yay for capitalism!
