U. S. Exceptionalism: Health Care Costs Are the Highest; Some Health Care Services are the Lowest

Well We Do Want to be Exceptional

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that looks at health care.  Here is their mission statement.

The mission of The Commonwealth Fund is to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society's most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.

Recently they looked at a specific aspect of health care, preventable deaths.  Given that the United States spend more as a percentage of national income on health care than any other advanced economy (much more), one would expect that the study on preventable deaths would show the U. S. at the top.  One would be wrong. 


 

One would not expect the U. S. to be at the bottom.  One would be wrong.

The United States placed last among 16 high-income, industrialized nations when it comes to deaths that could potentially have been prevented by timely access to effective health care, according to a Commonwealth Fund–supported study

That’s right the U. S. is dead last (no pun intended, really).  Here’s what that means.

84,000 fewer people would have died each year by the end of the period studied.  if the U.S. could improve its preventable death rate to match that of the best performing countries

Note that this is not a problem of economics.  It is not a problem of not spending enough money on health care.  It is a management problem.  It is a health care systems problem.  It is problem that derives from the fact that health care delivery in the United States is fatally flawed (pun is intended). 

And what about a solution?  Republicans would solve the problem by turning Medicare over to private insurance companies, turning Medicaid over to the states with insufficient block grants, and eliminating employer based health insurance.  None of which would reform the health care delivery system.  Democrats would  . . . well, do nothing major with the current system.  Not particularly inspiring choices, and the expectation is simply continued poor performance.

But we do want American Exceptionalism,  so the position of America as a country that spends the most and gets the least in health may well continue regardless of which political party is in power.

That is exceptionalism at its finest!