If you are going to get sick, don't get sick in America. The US stands out as the worst country for health care.
Analysis by Commonwealth Fund researchers, reported here, found that the United States ranks last overall compared to six other industrialized countries-Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The US came stone motherless last on criteria of quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and the ability to lead long, healthy, productive lives,
The key findings:
On measures of quality the United States ranked 6th out of 7 countries. On two of four measures of quality-effective care and patient-centered care-the U.S. ranks in the middle (4th out of 7 countries). However, the U.S. ranks last when it comes to providing safe care, and next to last on coordinated care. U.S. patients with chronic conditions are the most likely to report being given the wrong medication or the wrong dose of their medication, and experiencing delays in being notified about an abnormal test result.
On measures of efficiency, the U.S ranked last due to low marks when it comes to spending on administrative costs, use of information technology, re-hospitalization, and duplicative medical testing. Nineteen percent of U.S. adults with chronic conditions reported they visited an emergency department for a condition that could have been treated by a regular doctor, had one been available, more than three times the rate of patients in Germany or the Netherlands (6%).
On measures of access to care, people in the U.S. have the hardest time affording the health care they need-with the U.S. ranking last on every measure of cost-related access problems. For example, 54 percent of adults with chronic conditions reported problems getting a recommended test, treatment or follow-up care because of cost. In the Netherlands, which ranked first on this measure, only 7 percent of adults with chronic conditions reported this problem.
On measures of healthy lives, the U.S. does poorly, ranking last when it comes to infant mortality and deaths before age 75 that were potentially preventable with timely access to effective health care, and second to last on healthy life expectancy at age 60.
On measures of equity, the U.S. ranks last. Among adults with chronic conditions almost half (45%) with below average incomes in the U.S. reported they went without needed care in the past year because of costs, compared with just 4 percent in the Netherlands. Lower-income U.S. adults with chronic conditions were significantly more likely than those in the six other countries surveyed to report not going to the doctor when they're sick, not filling a prescription, or not getting recommended follow-up care because of costs.
And this is supposed to be the richest country in the world?
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