The Commonwealth Fund has released a new report that provides a disturbing, but not surprising, assessment of America's health care system. The United States ranked last among similar wealthy countries in terms of quality health care. This included the highest rates of infant and maternal deaths.AdvertisementThe Mirror, Mirror report, which compares the U.S. healthcare system with those in high-income countries, has been published by the Commonwealth Fund, a non-profit organization that focuses on health reform, founded in 1918. This week's latest edition was published. It compared the U.S. with 10 countries including Norway, the UK and Switzerland. Based on publicly available data, all five aspects of health care were assessed.Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands were the top performing countries, followed by Germany, the UK, and New Zealand. The U.S. ranked second, well behind its nearest peer, Canada. The U.S. was ranked 11th in four of these five metrics. It did better in one metric, care process. This was the only area where it performed well.According to the authors, care process is a country's ability provide timely preventive care such as cancer screenings and safe care in general. It also includes organized coordination among different parts of a system like emergency departments and primary care doctors. There are also good communication between doctors with patients regarding health risks like smoking.The U.S. did not do a good job of protecting the long-term health and well-being of its citizens everywhere else. The U.S. ranked last in infant death rate at 5.7 per 1,000 live-births. Norway, which is the highest ranked country, has a rate that is twice as high. It also ranked last for maternal mortality at 17.4 per 100,000 live births. Australia's life expectancy beyond 60 years was 23.1 years. People over 60 years old in Australia will live more than two years longer than Americans. It also did poorly in equity, with the gap between the rich and the poor in various health outcomes significantly larger than in other countries.The United States has almost two healthcare systems: one for those with means and insurance and one for those without. Eric Schneider, the senior vice president of policy and research at Commonwealth Fund, said that the second system is for people who don't have enough insurance or are not covered by their current insurance.The authors point out that the U.S. is the only high-income nation to not provide universal health coverage. This is a major reason for the country's poor performance. The top-performing countries guarantee universal health coverage for most residents. They also keep out-of pocket costs low and make sure that all services are accessible to everyone, regardless of where they live. Norway is one example of a country that has more doctors than the U.S., and universal health care systems tend to have fewer paperwork, which reduces their administrative costs.AdvertisementSome political leaders and organizations still want the U.S. adopt universal health care through the implementation a single-payer system, similar to those in wealthy countries. However, there may be some private insurance providers like in Germany. It is clear that this is not a priority for the current Democratic administration, nor the GOP. The authors believe there are some lessons the U.S. can learn from its peers like the need to have greater bargaining power when negotiating drug price.The COVID-19 pandemic is a clear example of how no country has a perfect health system. The science of health care is still in its infancy, which creates new challenges and opportunities. All countries can learn from the best and worst practices in other countries and try new policies and procedures that could help them get closer to the ideal health system, which provides optimal health for everyone at a cost the country can afford.
