U.S. ranks last in health care compared with nine other high-income countries, report finds

The US health system is broken, a new study reveals. 
 
The U. S is ranked the lowest among ten developed countries in Terming and Ranking them on four factors of health care; avoidable deaths, access to health care, equality in fundamental rights to be delivered by health care providers and the overall quality of health care irrespective of the gender, income or geographical location of the patient, as highlighted in the report released Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund an independent health care fund. 
 
According to recent published data people in the U. S. die youngest and have the highest level of mortality that is deemed preventable despite the fact that the country spends half more or about 18% of gross domestic product on health, than any other country that was ranked. 
 
Preliminary polls to the November presidential election show that health care is one of the most important issues in the minds of the voters. Kamala Harris has suggested an improvement of the Affordable Care Act which is popularly referred to as Obamacare. Outgoing President Donald Trump has not been very forthcoming when it comes to the health care policies he envisions; his vice presidential candidate JD Vance spoke about deregulation. 
 
The researchers add that in accordance with Thursday’s findings, the U. S. pays the largest amount of money but receives a smaller value for the money spent. 
 
“No other country in the world expects patients and families have to pay as much out of own money for necessary treatments as it is in the U. S. ,” Dr. Joseph Betancourt, president of The Commonwealth Fund, noted on a call held on Wednesday to present the above results. 
 
Ironically, the much the people are willing to pay does not go hand in hand with quality health services delivery. 
 
“We are severely undersupplied on the things that people need most,” including physicians and hospitalizations, Dr. David Blumenthal, the former president of The Commonwealth Fund, said on the call. “That is one of the reasons why the patient has to wait so long to get specialty care in the United States and one of the reasons why no one can seem to find a primary care physician. 
 
These were the perceptions collected through tens of thousands of polls of primary care physicians and residents across high-income countries in the last three years. 
 
The researchers looked at how the U. S. compared with nine other countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. Each country was graded on five categories: for where access to care was concerned, care process, administrative rationality, equity and health. 
 
As observed in the model, no country was ranked at the highest or the lowest in all the categories. The countries that topped the overall list were Australia, the Netherlands and the U. K. among these, Australia and the Netherlands spent the least on health care, as per the report. 
 
The researchers said that U. S. was very poorly placed and highlighted that its performance was “exceptionally weak”. 
 
It placed last or almost last in all the aspects except one; care process where it was second only to New Zealand. Care process works with targets that include preventive services such as mammogram and flu vaccinations, and patients’ engagement. 
 
High imposed costs of bureaucracy resulting from hospital bills, alleged insurance reimbursement and out of pocket expenses that patients and doctors are made to go through to ensure payment put U. S second last in the efficiency in administration. 
 
“At this point, it seems that we have so many different insurers and all are offering a different product with different characteristics with regards to getting paid for the physicians or hospitals and other providers as well as for the coverage of the patients,” Blumenthal noted. “That results in denial of service It results in bargaining which is continually carried out between doctors, hospitals and insurers’ companies. 
 
It also reported that in the equity index, U. S was second to last, with many people of low income saying they could not afford the health care they required and that more people were discriminated against or treated unfairly. 
 
For instance, the U. S had the lowest life expectancy and the highest rates of, preventable and treatable, excess deaths which has only worsened with the emergence of the pandemic. 
 
The level of life expectancy for people in the U. S. was last year 77 years. Five years, increasing slightly over one year from 2021, when the COVID19 pandemic decreased the life expectancy rate to 76. 4 years, that current data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. 
 
“That is a new finding,” added Blumenthal. “We have never had a pandemic-related finding in a previous report”, and it reveals, unfortunately, the generally low performance for which history proved true when it came to Covid mortality performance. 
 
an can still get access to sophisticated and expensive medical treatments. 
 
Lawrence Gostin, a director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University said that the results of the study confirmed other works that showed that the US ranks below its counterparts in the levels of nearly all major health outcomes like life expectancy, childhood, maternal mortality, health literacy or health equity. 
 
Specifically, blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans remain uninsured or underinsured, with people of color being generally sicker and poorer than white people, Gostin said. Due to the skyrocketing cost of medical services more people only seek treatment for serious illnesses that have persisted and would have been easily treated. 
 
“The United States pays for probably the most sophisticated medical care globally if one can pay it,” Gostin said. “Thus, high-quality medical care remains beyond the reach of far too many people. ” 
 
Dr. Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts, pointed out that the U. S. differs from the other countries in one critical area: this will directly lead to the pursuit of goals such as; universal health care coverage. 
 
“A universal health care system can make a difference,” Gaffney said, “not least because they are all insured, and can visit a doctor when they need to do so, or seek advice or treatment and preventive measures for common ailments from a familiar health care provider. ” 
 
Previously, the U. S. has always ranked last in such reports compiled by the Commonwealth Fund, however, to minimize comparability from one report to the other the researchers alter the questions and the countries involved. 
 
In the report released on Thursday, recommendations on the use of how to improve the health services in the country with the aim of reducing the rates for health care services were also listed alongside availability and affordability of coverage. 
 
It is easy to see the US’s flaws from this, an international perspective but also see the potential for alteration,” noted Reginald Williams II, the vice president of the International Health Policy and Practice Innovations program at The Commonwealth Fund.