We Are Number Last

Margalit Gur-Arie | On Health Care Technology | June 23, 2014

The Commonwealth Fund just published its fourth Mirror, Mirror on the Wall study comparing the U.S. health care system with other countries, and as in all previous studies, we ranked as the absolutely worst health care system in the developed world, bar none. Yikes. The Commonwealth Fund studied many health care domains, and we didn’t rank in first place for anything. The best we managed to do is place a lackluster third in the subcategory of Effective Care. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, with its socialized medicine system, took first place in almost every category, and the Swiss came in second.  That’s almost enough to drive a proud American into deep despair, and as the report bluntly states, “The claim that the United States has “the best health care system in the world” is clearly not true”. To add insult to injury, ours is also clearly the most expensive system in the world, and no, that doesn’t count as being #1 for something.

The authors of the Commonwealth Fund report are gracefully doing their best to cheer us up and give us hope, by pointing out that “[s]ince the data in this study were collected, the U.S. has made significant strides adopting health information technology and undertaking payment and delivery system reforms spurred by the Affordable Care Act”. It may be okay to hope that the next Mirror, Mirror report will show us moving up a couple of notches, instead of continuing to be the laughing stock of all developed nations. So how do we go about improving our scores? Adopting health IT is obviously the first thing, and then we need to “encourage more affordable access and more efficient organization and delivery of health care, and allow investment in preventive and population health measures”. Sounds like a plan...