We cant count on the health care Luddites calling for repeal of Insurance Reform to minimize how the present deficient patchwork of private insurance stacks up against the health care systems on other countries. Those other comparable countries (with advanced industrial economies) have both public health care systems, and strictly regulated systems of private insurance.
U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study
(Reuters) - 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 United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.
I've visited 5 of the other six countries the Commonwealth study looks at. When the subject of U.S. health care comes up, the people in those countries look at the sorry situation in the U.S. with pity tinged with disbelief that Americans (who as individuals come across as intelligent, and compassionate) would accept such a tawdry health care system.
n 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.
And yet Americans get less for their money, said the Commonwealth Fund's Cathy Schoen.
"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."
In the U.S. system of private insurance we are made to pay much more and receive relatively poor care of all that money. We may already be aware of this, but we need to keep hammering on how Americans pay much more for less to demonstrate the fallacy of clinging to a private insurance patchwork that's coming apart at the seams.
"On measures of quality the United States ranked 6th out of seven countries," the group said in a statement.
In America we accept repetitively low quality health care when we compare our system to other repetitively affluent countries. Yet Republicans are trying mightily to scare people that Insurance Reform mill make a bad system even worse. This study can show Americans how far the U.S. lags behind other countries.