Posted on 05/15/2007 1:54:12 PM PDT by libertarianPA
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans get the poorest health care and yet pay the most compared to five other rich countries, according to a report released on Tuesday.
Germany, Britain, Australia and Canada all provide better care for less money, the Commonwealth Fund report found.
"The U.S. health care system ranks last compared with five other nations on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and outcomes," the non-profit group which studies health care issues said in a statement.
Canada rates second worst out of the five overall. Germany scored highest, followed by Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
"The United States is not getting value for the money that is spent on health care," Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis said in a telephone interview.
The group has consistently found that the United States, the only one of the six nations that does not provide universal health care, scores more poorly than the others on many measures of health care.
Congress, President George W. Bush, many employers and insurers have all agreed in recent months to overhaul the U.S. health care system -- an uncoordinated conglomeration of employer-funded care, private health insurance and government programs.
The current system leaves about 45 million people with no insurance at all, according to U.S. government estimates from 2005, and many studies have shown most of these people do not receive preventive services that not only keep them healthier, but reduce long-term costs.
Davis said the fund's researchers looked at hard data for the report.
"It is pretty indisputable that we spend twice what other countries spend on average," she said.
Per capita health spending in the United States in 2004 was $6,102, twice that of Germany, which spent $3,005. Canada spent $3,165, New Zealand $2,083 and Australia $2,876, while Britain spent $2,546 per person.
KEY MEASURES
"We focus primarily on measures that are sensitive to medical care making a difference -- infant mortality and healthy lives at age 60," Davis said. "Those are pretty key measures, like how long you live and whether you are going to die before age 75."
Measures of other aspects of care such as cataract surgery or hip replacements is harder to come by, she said.
They also looked at convenience and again found the United States lacking -- with a few exceptions.
"We include measures such as waiting more than four months for elective, non-emergency surgery. The United States doesn't do as well as Germany but it does a lot better than the other countries on waiting time for surgery," Davis said.
"We looked at the time it takes to get in to see your own doctor ... (or) once you go to the emergency room do you sit there for more than two hours, and truthfully, we don't do well on those measures," Davis said.
According to the report, 61 percent of U.S. patients said it was somewhat or very difficult to get care on nights or weekends, compared with 25 percent to 59 percent in other countries.
"The area where the U.S. health care system performs best is preventive care, an area that has been monitored closely for over a decade by managed care plans," the report reads.
The United States had the fewest patients -- 84 percent -- reporting that they have a regular doctor.
And U.S. doctors are the least wired, with the lowest percentage using electronic medical records or receiving electronic updates on recommended treatments.
One Word
Bull$hit!!!!
More MSM BS
Yeah, right.
Why are people from all those “better” countries coming here for care they can’t get there?
If its Reuters it is wrong.
Does Reuters mention the fact you have to BRIBE socialized medicine officials to get the job done?
Does Reuiters mention the FACT socialized medicine is institutionalizing DUTY TO DIE?
no, because all the beautiful people at Reuters don’t get sick or old. In fact they bribe all the right people to get the care the little people don’t need.
“Americans get the poorest health care”
Have you ever played the game called Bull$hit? Tell a lie long enough and many @-holes will believe it.
Bull$hit
It sounds like their results are based on self-reports. IOW they asked people what they thought of their medical care. Maybe Americans have higher standards and are therefore more critical of care than Europeans, who are used to long waits, etc.
As for infant mortality and age at death, when you have a large number of third world immigrants clogging up your system, you’re going to have high mortality rates.
I also call BS on the convenience criterion. My aging dad has had some fairly complicated health problems over the past few years, and he’s never waited more than a few days for any needed procedure.
And as for the ER waiting times, we all know the reason for that. Or hasn’t the author visited an ER lately?
B.S. In all those countries you can’t even GET health care if you need it.
Patient: “Oh, doctor, I’m having a heart attack!”
UHC Doctor: “OK, get in line with the rest of the peons, and maybe we can fit you in in a year or two.”
They are shills for fascist health care schemes.
But, that aside, I just don’t get it. The left wants people drawn and quartered over the Walter Reed scandals at the same time they are trying to convince us that nationalized healthcare is a great thing. Just goes to show you that con artists will always be with us. If you like the way our bravest and finest young men are treated, you’ll just love national healthcare!
We deserve what we get.
I know that in England you are forced to see your government GP (agent) before you can see any other doctor/specialist. Even if you are paying cash or are privately insured. Of course you know your regular doctor. He is the gatekeeper.
And U.S. doctors are the least wired, with the lowest percentage using electronic medical records or receiving electronic updates on recommended treatments.
Probably something to do with privacy rights.
Let the liberals have a government rationed single payer plan like Canada's for those who opt in, and let those who opt in pay for it. If Canada can make single payer work (sort of) with 32 million people, we can to.
Then leave the rest of us alone.
Sure, any system will have to be subsized for the poor. We already do this through Medicaid. Just turn Medicaid into a voucher and let people choose.
Gov’t health care kills.
“And U.S. doctors are the least wired....”
Makes it harder for the bureaucrat’s to figure out how and where to ration care...
I wouldn’t trust anything that comes out of the Commonwealth Fund, a leftist interest group posing as a non-partisan non-profit. This study sounds like it may be deeply flawed — for one thing, it sounds like they are relying upon self-reporting, and people in the different countries may have very different standards/expectations, lack of identical norms for access, etc. Also, a lot of these studies about “access” lump all “non-insured” into the numbers..... how about if they are among the 12-20+ million ILLEGALS??? Despite what socialist twits believe, the measure of the US health care standards should NOT be affected by how ILLEGALS who snuck into the country are or are not treated (millions of ‘em get treated in our ERs, for sure, so they get much more health care service than they ever got in Mexico).
Also, when study authors and MSM bozos prattle about how much is “spent” per capita in US health care, do they ever distinguish the many billions of dollars spent on R&D, new discoveries, new procedures and drugs, etc.?? We do a large % of all the medical R&D for the world here, and most other countries are PARASITES benefitting from all the advances here.
I read a friends’ copy of AARP. They are shills for national healthcare...boy how the blood boils, and that not covered under my PPO!
This is indeed pish. I wish I could show the results of this nonsense to my father in the UK, who died some months after being told that he had severaly clogged coronary arteries, while waiting for surgery. In the US, he could get treatment within hours of such a diagnosis.
My mother is 75 and will have to go to the private system for hip replacements.
No kidney transplants are performed for the over 65s under the British National “Health” service.
Unbelievable cr*p.
It appears that the conclusion of the study is that the US health care system is not as socialistic as that of other countries. They’re right.
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