The U.S. health care system is failing to keep Americans healthy, ranking last in a new Commonwealth Fund report that compares health and health care in 10 countries. U.S. performance is particularly poor when it comes to health equity, access to care, efficiency, and health outcomes.
According to Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System, the U.S. spends the most on health care, yet Americans live shorter, less healthy lives than people in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Other key findings:
- Americans experience the most difficulties getting and affording health care.
- The U.S. and New Zealand rank lowest on health equity, meaning they have the largest income-related differences in key measures of health system performance, and more of their residents face unfair treatment and discrimination when seeking care compared to residents of the other countries.
- Patients and physicians in the U.S. face the most onerous billing and payment burdens, leading to poor performance on measures of administrative efficiency.
“The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its health care sector,” say the study’s authors, who call for policymakers and health care leaders to learn from other countries’ experiences and act.
