A new report reveals that the the U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world yet delivers the worst care among 11 industrialized nations, in what critics charge is further proof that the private insurance model is broken.
“The only solution is to move away from the private insurance model that keeps costs up and real care down,” Drew Joy, member of the Southern Maine Workers Center, told Common Dreams. “What we need is a publicly and equitably funded universal health care system, and in order to get it we must organize for our human rights.”
Released on Monday by the Commonwealth Fund, the report examines Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, looking at patient and physician surveys as well as data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Health Organization.
The U.S.’s dismal rating is not new. The country has come in dead last every year this survey has been produced—in 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2010—with lack of access to health care, failures in equitability, and inefficiencies cited as key reasons for its latest low-ranking. In the report, the U.S. scores last in “mortality amenable to medical care, infant mortality, and healthy life expectancy at age 60.”
Low-income people in the U.S., the report notes, are “much more likely than their counterparts in other countries to report not visiting a physician when sick; not getting a recommended test, treatment, or follow-up care; or not filling a prescription or skipping doses when needed because of costs.”
One of the key reasons for this is due to a U.S. private health insurance system that saddles people with high out-of-pocket expenses and “unstable coverage” that is rarely portable and often based on employment status.
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