Links
Report: Costly US health care falls short
Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.
The US health care system is the costliest in the world, but underperforms relative to many other industrialized nations, according to a study released Wednesday.
The report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation focused on health, updated its comparison of the US medical care system to those in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Britain.
The US system "ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives," the report said.
But the study, an update to three prior reports, noted that newly enacted health reform legislation in the US "will start to address these problems" by extending coverage and helping to close gaps in coverage.