How Bad Is U.S. Health Care? Among Industrialized Nations
The health care system in the United States of America has been a topic of discussion in the academia and media for mostly the wrong reasons. Among the developed nations, the US fares pretty poorly in terms of the efficiency and equity of the health care system. For example, based on the 2014 Commonwealth Fund survey, the US health care system ranked the lowest among all other industrialized nations for the stark fifth time.
The issues of lack of equity and high out of pocket expense in the form of co-insurance, high deductibles and large premiums paid by the insured population are testimony to the ailing health care system of the US. Despite the expensive insurance, the gaps in the coverage are too huge to be true, which highlights the other major issue with the system. In the world of obscene premiums, guessing the plight of the uninsured deserves no prize. Despite efforts of the Democrat government under Obama, the lack of medical care for all is a glaring gap between the US health care system and that of other developed nations. The popular apprehension regarding the current US Government under the extreme rightist stance of the Republican President, Donald Trump, is that the vestiges of Obama medi-care would also be rescinded by the end of this ruling term. It will make the matters only worse for an already exacerbated state of the US health care system.
The income bracket driven health care is a far common phenomenon in the US over any other industrialized nation. To put this in perspective, in the United Kingdom, 7 % of people from low-income group and 4% from high-income group were deprived of the desired health care owing to the high cost of the sought services. On the same metric, in the US, 44% of people from low income group and 26% of people from high income group were the victims of the exorbitantly priced health care services. Again, the policy changes contemplated by the current US Government aim to get rid of the Affordable Health Care that covers several low and middle income people. The above mentioned numbers will look worse if it happens as millions will lose access to health care.
Among the issues with US health care system discussed above, there are many others too. Despite the high health care costs, US rank the lowest among the developed nations even in terms of administrative efficiency, care delivery and health care outcomes. The care process is ambiguous and unfriendly to the patients. For example, a patient in need of a cardiac disease treatment will need to be routed to the cardiac department via his primary care physician, who would not have any role to play in the treatment process other than charging his/her office visit fees to the patient’s insurance provider. This turns even worse when the patient reaches the cardiac department, as the tests he/she is usually subscribed to take are often needless to the final treatment he/ she receive. After all this, the patient is subjected to multiple hapless follow-ups. The cumulative process dents the patient’s insurance history beyond repair at times so much so that once the person is out of employment, he/ she struggles to get a reasonable insurance.
Access to efficient and affordable healthcare should probably be among the basic human rights, certainly in developed nations with funds and infrastructure to facilitate the same. Unfortunately, the US seems to have found itself stuck in a time-warp on this count.