
The US spends almost 18% of its gross domestic product on health, compared with a range of 9.6% to 12.4% for the other 10 countries. The health care measures included general health system spending, labour costs, structural capacity, access, utilisation and population health. The researchers found that the US: spent twice as much on pharmaceuticals; had the highest rate of private insurance, at 55%; and had the highest remuneration for its doctors: $316,000 for specialists compared to $98,000 in Sweden and $202,000 in Australia.
While the US performed better on acute care outcomes – such as heart attack and stroke – than on primary care measures, it had relatively poor population outcomes. For example, life expectancy in the US, at 78.8 years, was less than all the other high-income countries, while maternal mortality, at 26.4 per 100,000 live births, was three times the average of the other 10 countries.
One of the largest discrepancies was in imaging. The US performed the greatest number of CT scans and the second highest number of MRI scans per 1,000 people, at 245 and 118 respectively. These exams were also more expensive: $896 for a CT scan in the US compared with $97 in Canada and $432 in Switzerland, while the average cost for an MRI was $1,145 in the US compared with $461 in the Netherlands. The US had the highest number of mammography systems at 43 per million people, compared with Canada at 17 and France at just 7.5 (in South Africa the number is approximately 4).
The authors wrote: “The data suggest that the main driving factors were related to prices, including prices of physician and hospital services, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostic tests.” They also found that administrative costs were much higher in the US, and concluded that cost-containment measures that focused only on utilisation were unlikely to address the problem.
A MOST RELEVANT BLOG!
JEFF BEZOS(AMAZON) AND COMPANY, WHO I UNDERSTAND HAVE RECENTLY ENTERED THE MEDICAL FIELD, MIGHT WELL FIND THIS OF INTEREST.
Wonder what we should do if we would make a worldwide meta-analysis on mammographic breast cancer screening. The US eligible?