Reader Dan on Healthcare

Reader Dan disagrees with this post by reader Sammy. Here’s Reader Dan…

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The Commonwealth Fund, a non-partisan think tank, charts other factors to determine rankings of a country’s health care.

The U.S. health system is the most expensive in the world, but comparative analyses consistently show the United States underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. This report, which includes information from primary care physicians about their medical practices and views of their countries’ health systems, confirms the patient survey findings discussed in previous editions of Mirror, Mirror. It also includes information on health care outcomes that were featured in the U.S. health system scorecard issued by the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.

Among the six nations studied—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2006 and 2004 editions of Mirror, Mirror. Most troubling, the U.S. fails to achieve better health outcomes than the other countries, and as shown in the earlier editions, the U.S. is last on dimensions of access, patient safety, efficiency, and equity. The 2007 edition includes data from the six countries and incorporates patients’ and physicians’ survey results on care experiences and ratings on various dimensions of care.

Common Dreams indicates that as was found in past surveys, the U.S. is an outlier in terms of financial burdens placed on patients. One–half of adults with health problems in the U.S. said they did not see a doctor when sick, did not get recommended treatment, or did not fill a prescription because of cost. Despite these high rates of forgone care, one-third of U.S. patients spent more than $1,000 out-of-pocket in the past year. There were wide and significant variations in access and waiting times on multiple dimensions across the six countries.

Respondents in Canada and the U.S. were significantly less likely than those in other countries to report same-day access and more likely to wait six days or longer for an appointment. At the same time, majorities of patients in New Zealand (58%) and Germany (56%), and nearly half in Australia (49%) and the U.K. (45%), were able to get same-day appointments. Waiting times for elective surgery or specialists were shortest in Germany and the U.S., with the majority of patients in both countries reporting rapid access.

Relative to the U.S. and Canada, the four countries reporting comparatively rapid access to physicians—Australia, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K.—also had significantly lower rates of emergency room use.

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This post was by Reader Dan.