Blog#146- 2/5/23
U.S. HEALTH CARE CONTINUES TO HAVE THE WORST OUTCOMES
By
Richard Davis
It shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone who has used the U.S. health care non-system that we have the worst health outcomes of any high-income nation. The health care statistics about the U.S. delivery of health care are alarming, but that has been the case for many decades and the situation shows no sign of changing anytime soon.
If we cut to the chase, the reason that we spend more per person on health care, that we have the lowest life expectancy at birth, that we have the highest death rates for avoidable or treatable conditions and that we have the highest maternal and infant mortality rate among high-incomes countries is because of the profit motive.
All of the countries that do better than us on all of those metrics have decided that government has a responsibility to make sure that its citizens all have an affordable level of accessible health care. We have decided that health care should be a commodity and that our citizens should be treated as if they were automobiles or refrigerators.
I and many others have been ranting about this situation for decades. There has been a fair amount of political activism around health care reform but very little changes. The reason is that major hospital chains, the insurance industry and pharmaceutical manufacturers, among other players, have become so rich and powerful that they have been able to own the most powerful politicians in the country.
The situation with health care makes it clear that our form of politics only works best for those who have the most money. That is the way it was when this country was created and it has only gotten worse over the centuries. When the model for the delivery of health care is based on a free market system it means that the more money you have the more likely you are to stay healthy and live a long life. Too many politicians have accepted the reality that the poor and vulnerable among us suffer and die the most. That level of complacency should be criminal, but instead it is business as usual in the U.S.
The reason I have gotten worked up about this old and lingering problem is because a new version of U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective was recently released by The Commonwealth Fund. Here are some extracts from the depressing details of the report.
“Health care spending, both per person and as a share of GDP, continues to be far higher in the United States than in other high-income countries. Yet the U.S. is the only country that doesn’t have universal health coverage.
The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest death rates for avoidable or treatable conditions, the highest maternal and infant mortality, and among the highest suicide rates.
The U.S. has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions and an obesity rate nearly twice the OECD average.
Americans see physicians less often than people in most other countries and have among the lowest rate of practicing physicians and hospital beds per 1,000 population.
While the United States spends more on health care than any other high-income country, the nation often performs worse on measures of health and health care. For the U.S., a first step to improvement is ensuring that everyone has access to affordable care. Not only is the U.S. the only country we studied that does not have universal health coverage, but its health system can seem designed to discourage people from using services.
Affordability remains the top reason why some Americans do not sign up for health coverage, while high out-of-pocket costs lead nearly half of working-age adults to skip or delay getting needed care.”
We need to make the people who could change the way health care is delivered in this country accountable for the death and suffering of Americans who can’t afford health care. We have yet to try them as criminals in the court of public opinion. They should be brought before the international criminal court for violating principles of the Declaration of Human Rights.
Nothing will change until we make a radical change to the way politics is conducted in this country. I don’t see that happening in the next few centuries.
Here is a link to the report I referenced:
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2022
