According to a new study released from The Commonwealth Fund, patients in the U.S. do not receive notably exceptional care compared with 13 other industrialized countries, despite health costs averaging one-third to two-thirds more than the other advanced countries. The average cost was $8,000 per person in 2009.
David Squires, study author, analyzed data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and other sources to compare healthcare spending, supply, utilization, prices and quality in 13 industrialized countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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According to Squires, high spending cannot be attributed to higher income, an older population or greater supply or utilization of hospitals and doctors, which is often what many people assume. Instead, he said, the findings suggest the higher spending is more likely due to higher prices and perhaps more readily accessible technology and greater obesity.
“Many people believe we spend more because we might utilize our health system more – going to see doctors more often and more access to care. However, we actually go to our doctors less and have fewer hospital beds,” said Squires. “We spend our money on higher process it seems, like higher costs for medications and diagnostic testing. We also have an above average use of diagnostic technologies. These things seem to be the primary drivers of cost.”
Squires said the quality of healthcare in the U.S. appears to be variable, with better-than-average cancer survival rates, average in-hospital mortality rates for heart attacks and stroke, and the worst rates of presumably preventable deaths due to asthma and amputations due to diabetes compared with the other study countries.
In comparison to the U.S., Japan, which has the lowest health spending among these countries at $2,878 per person in 2009, controls costs primarily through aggressive price regulation. According to the study, the U.S. spends more than 17 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, whereas Japan spends 8.5 percent of their gross domestic product.
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“The main point of the study shows that we seem to spend so much on healthcare but aren’t getting what we should out of it. It shows we need to improve the value of what we are paying for,” he said. “Parts of the Affordable Care Act could improve outcomes and make sure we have more value for our dollar. It’ll focus on rewarding providers for better outcomes rather than volume.”
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