America Spends The Most On Health Care, Yet Gets The Least

What the rest of the world can teach conservatives -- and all Americans -- about socialism, health care, and the path toward more affordable insuranceReutersAvik S. A. Roy

Years ago, the World Health Organization came out with a ranking of health systems that placed the US 37th. Over time, there's been a fair amount of controversy over the WHO's methodology, and so the Commonwealth Foundation began a new project to assemble a comparative international picture: They chose seven countries and conducted deep, ongoing polls of both patients and health-care providers. The surveys test experiences with the system, cost questions, efficiency, convenience, health outcomes and much more.

Yesterday, congress appropriated a $680 billion for the Department of Defense in FY 2010. Chris Preble observes that, shockingly enough, this $680 billion isn’t even the whole bill:

The US health care system is the costliest in the world, but underperforms relative to many other industrialized nations, according to a study released Wednesday.The report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation focused on health, updated its comparison of the US medical care system to those in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Britain.The US system "ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives," the report said.

Canada ranks 17th out of 29 so-called wealthy countries when it comes to the well-being of children, according to a new study from UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency. UNICEF graded the 29 countries in five categories and Canada’s best ranking was 11th in the area of housing and environment. The UN agency placed Canada 14th in educational well-being, 15th in material well-being, 16th in behaviour and risks and a low 27th in health and safety.

Health spending in the United States grew 6.1 percent in 2007, to $2.2 trillion or $7,421 per person.

Food is much cheaper than it was 30 years ago. We're spending more of our grocery money on processed foods. And other insights.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us