560
submitted 1 month ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Despite Americans paying nearly double that of other nations, the US fares poorly in list of 10 countries

The United States health system ranked dead last in an international comparison of 10 peer nations, according to a new report by the Commonwealth Fund.

In spite of Americans paying nearly double that of other countries, the system performed poorly on health equity, access to care and outcomes.

"I see the human toll of these shortcomings on a daily basis," said Dr Joseph Betancourt, the president of the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation with a focus on healthcare research and policy.

...

The fund said the US would need to expand insurance coverage and make “meaningful” improvements on the amount of healthcare expenses patients pay themselves; minimize the complexity and variation in insurance plans to improve administrative efficiency; build a viable primary care and public health system; and invest in social wellbeing, rather than thrust problems of social inequity onto the health system.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Resand@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

No no no, that's simply wrong.

US healthcare system is the best in the world, at doing what it's designed to do. Issue here is that they're measuring it on care provide vs cost, while the US system is optimized for profits.

If they instead ranked the results by which system generated the most private profits the US would be first.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

The line I've heard is

best in the world for those who can afford it

But medicine is still an industry that benefits from economy of scale. It still benefits from public sector R&D. It still benefits from robust safety regulations and enforcement of best practices.

We've been chipping away at all of that. Hell, we're straight up closing hospitals and clinics all over the country, purely because so few of them are economically viable when pitted against a ruthless private insurance market.

If they instead ranked the results by which system generated the most private profits

There are sectors that bring in big profits, but they're extracting those profits from the sectors that deliver the medicine.

The snake is eating it's own tail. This isn't a long term strategy for profit. Every quarterly cycle leans harder on Medicaid and Medicare as the private systems fail.

this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
560 points (99.1% liked)

News

23275 readers
3465 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS