Data from the Commonwealth fund report, Toward Higher-Performance Health Systems: Adults’ Health Care Experiences in Seven Countries, 2007:
| Australia | Canada | Germany | Netherlands | New Zealand | UK | USA | |
| National health spending – Percent of GDP | 9.5% | 9.8% | 10.7% | 9.2% | 9.0% | 8.3% | 16.0% |
| Percent uninsured | 0 | 0 | <1 | <2 | 0 | 0 | 16 |
| Last time you were sick or needed care, how quickly could you get an appointment to see a doctor? | |||||||
| Same day | 42 | 22 | 55 | 49 | 53 | 41 | 30 |
| Next day | 20 | 14 | 10 | 21 | 22 | 17 | 19 |
| 2-5 days | 26 | 26 | 10 | 17 | 17 | 26 | 25 |
| 6 or more days | 10 | 30 | 20 | 5 | 4 | 12 | 20 |
| Overall health system views | |||||||
| Only minor changes needed, system works well | 24 | 26 | 20 | 42 | 26 | 26 | 16 |
| Fundamental changes needed | 55 | 60 | 51 | 49 | 56 | 57 | 48 |
| Rebuild completely | 18 | 12 | 28 | 9 | 17 | 15 | 34 |
Related: Measuring the Health of Nations – USA Paying More for Health Care – Traveling for Health Care – resources for improvement health system performance
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The US system costs over 50% more than others and has worse outcome measures than the alternatives (and leaves many without any coverage)…
[…] is the huge problem. The country either needs to stop paying an extra 50-80% for health care than other countries do (and thus reduce the cost of Medicare liabilities) or massively cut benefits or massively increase […]
[…] Unfortunately patients are driven more by marketing than medicine. Much worse though, doctors seem to bend to these patients marketing driven desires. Plus the corrupting influence of money on research and marketing to doctors seems likely a significant reason for the poor performance and high cost of USA health care. […]
Funny how it takes an American based management consultant / systems thinker to publish some interestign and relevant data on comparative healthcare…
[…] current health care system is not working. It is far too costly. It is not effective. It is a disease management system not a health care system. The damage to the economy of this […]
The credit crisis is an immediate crisis (with roots in many bad decisions over the last decade). But the health care crisis is just as deadly…
[…] system in the USA is broken, as I have written about previously: USA Paying More for Health Care, International Health Care System Performance… One of the many problems created by the current system is ruined person finances for […]
The costs for health services and supplies for 2007 were distributed among businesses (25%), households (31%), other private sponsors (4%), and governments (40%)…
those that want to fix the broken system should listen to sensible criticism and make improvements (not just defend any changes because the existing system is so bad)…
These rankings are not the final word on exactly where each country truly ranks but they do provide a valuable source of information. With this type of data there is plenty of room for judgment and issues with the data…