Expensive and Ineffective: The US Has the Worst Health Care in the Developed World

The United States ranks last in health care among the top 19 high-income countries, according to a report released Sept. XNUMX by the independent research group The Commonwealth Fund. People in the United States are dying young and have the highest number of preventable deaths. This is despite the fact that people in the United States spend far more on health care than citizens of other countries in the top XNUMX high-income countries, the report says. NBC News.

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The United States ranks last among 10 developed countries in critical areas of health, including preventing deaths, access to health care (largely due to high costs), and ensuring quality treatment for everyone, regardless of gender, income, or geography, according to a Sept. 19 report by the independent research group The Commonwealth Fund.

New findings suggest that many of the deaths recorded in the United States could have been prevented, despite the country spending about 18 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, far more than other countries in the index.

On the subject: How much do retirees spend on healthcare in the US?

Polls show health care is a top priority for voters in the November 2024 presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed building on the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. President Donald Trump has said little about his vision for health care, and his running mate, J.D. Vance, has proposed deregulating the industry.

The United States currently spends the most on health care but gets the least return on its investment.

“No country in the world expects patients and families to pay as much out of pocket for essential health care as they do in the United States,” said Dr. Joseph Betancourt, president of the Commonwealth Fund.

Ironically, the high price people pay does not guarantee them quality care.

“We have shortages of the things people need most, including doctors and hospital beds,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, former president of the Commonwealth Fund. “That’s one of the reasons why there are so many long waits for specialty care in the United States, and one of the reasons why no one can find a primary care doctor.”

The report's findings were based on tens of thousands of survey responses from primary care physicians and residents of high-income countries collected over the past three years.

The researchers compared the United States with nine other countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Each country was assessed on five categories: access to care, the process of providing care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes.

Last year, the average life expectancy in the U.S. was 77,5 years, just a year higher than in 2021, when the pandemic dropped life expectancy to 76,4 years, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a new finding,” Blumenthal said. “We never saw data related to the pandemic in the previous report, and it shows that, unfortunately, our overall low numbers remain the same even when we take into account the COVID death rates.”

Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and International Health Law at Georgetown University, said the findings are consistent with other studies that consistently rank the United States near the bottom of developed countries on nearly every major health measure, including life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality, and free and equal access to health care.

Many of America’s most vulnerable populations, including racial minorities and low-income people, are uninsured or underinsured, Gostin said. Given the high cost of health care, many people delay or avoid treatment.

“The United States provides perhaps the most advanced treatments in the world, but only to those who can afford them,” Gostin concluded. “For too many people, high-quality health care is out of reach.”

Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance in Massachusetts, noted that the U.S. differs from other countries in one important area: universal health care coverage.

“A universal health care system can make a difference,” Gaffney agreed, “not only because everyone is covered and can see a doctor when they need one, but because people have doctors they go to all the time to give advice or recommendations on how to treat and prevent common illnesses.”

The United States has ranked last in previous Commonwealth Fund reports, but researchers have tried to avoid direct comparisons from report to report because they change questions and lists of participating countries.

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The Sept. 19 report also outlines options for addressing health care problems, including lowering the cost of treatment and expanding access to insurance.

“The United States’ shortcomings are clear, but so are the opportunities for change,” said Reginald Williams II, vice president of the Commonwealth Fund’s International Health Policy and Practice Innovation Program.

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