US
Ranked Worst Healthcare System: UK’s National
Health Service Leads
By Andy
Coghlan
July
14, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- A comparison of health systems in 11 wealthy
nations has found the US falling short by
multiple measures, while the UK’s National
Health Service leads in several categories.
“We measured performance quality across five
domains, and the USA fell short in all five,”
says
Eric Schneider
of the
Commonwealth Fund
think tank in Washington DC. The domains were
ease of access to healthcare, how equal access
is to people of different incomes,
administrative efficiency, how well the care
process works for people who use it, and how
good the health outcomes are.
The analysis
included data from sources including the World
Health Organization, the OECD, and
questionnaires completed by people and their
doctors in the 11 countries examined, which also
included Australia, Canada, Germany and Sweden.
Overall, the US ranked last, although it ranked
fifth in the care process category. The UK came
top overall, but ranked tenth for healthcare
outcomes – how well patients fare after
treatment.
Unequal access
The US
fell particularly short when it came to access
to healthcare. The study found that in the US,
44 per cent of people on low incomes have
difficulty accessing healthcare, and even 26 per
cent of those on high incomes report access
problems. The equivalent figures in the UK are
only 7 and 4 per cent. “A higher-earning person
in the US is more likely to meet cost barriers
than a low-income person in the UK,” says
Schneider.
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The report says that, since President Obama’s
Affordable Care Act
(ACA) had been introduced, there has been some
improvement, with access to healthcare coverage
being extended to more than
20 million extra people
in the US.
“The ACA has helped make major strides in
coverage and access to care in the US,
particularly for lower-income Americans,” says
Benjamin Sommers
of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
in Boston, Massachusetts.
“Current proposals being debated in Congress
could undo most of that progress by increasing
the number of people without health insurance by
more than 20 million over the next decade,” says
Sommers. “Rather than narrowing the gap with its
rivals, the US might fall further behind.”
This article was first published by
New Scientist
-
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
