Wealthy countries, including the U.S. UU. By continuing to browse our website, you accept the use of the cookie for statistical and personalization purposes. Learn more Mirror, Mirror 2024 is your chance to explore the impact of political decisions on health and well-being in 10 countries, including the U.S.
It spends nearly 18 percent of GDP on health care, but Americans die younger and are less healthy than residents of other high-income countries. Not just the U.S. They have the lowest life expectancy of high-income countries, but they also have the highest rates of preventable deaths. In the previous edition of U.S.
Healthcare from a Global Perspective, we reported that people in the United States experience the worst overall health outcomes of any high-income country, 1 Americans are more likely to die younger and from preventable causes than residents of peer countries. For each metric we examine, we use the most recent data available. This means that the results of some countries may reflect the high point of the COVID-19 pandemic, when mental health problems were increasing, essential health services were interrupted, and patients may not receive the same level of care (3 health expenses per person in the United States). It was almost twice as high as in the nearest country, Germany, and four times as high as in South Korea.
In the U.S. All countries included in this analysis, except the U.S. In addition to public coverage, people in several countries have the option of also purchasing private coverage. In France, almost the entire population has public and private insurance. High suicide rates, which increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, may indicate a high burden of mental illness 13. The United States has the third highest suicide rate, while the United Kingdom has the lowest, almost half that of the US.
It is an atypical case of deaths due to physical assault, including violence with firearms. Its 7.4 deaths per 100,000 people are well above the OECD average of 2.7, and at least seven times more than in all other high-income countries included in our study, except New Zealand. Obesity is a key risk factor for chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Problems that contribute to obesity include unhealthy living environments, less regulated food and agriculture sectors, lower socioeconomic status, and higher rates of behavioral health problems 14, USA.
It has the highest obesity rate among the countries we studied, where the available data were almost twice as high as the OECD average. Health care spending is the highest in the world, and in general, Americans visit doctors less often than residents of most other high-income countries. With four visits per person per year, Americans go to the doctor less often than the OECD average. Less frequent doctor visits may be related to the comparatively low supply of doctors in the U.S.
More than two-thirds of older Americans receive the flu vaccine, as do older residents of several other high-income countries, and more than the OECD average. It works relatively well in preventing cancer. This is likely due to the need for comprehensive screening and screening tests, which are essential for diagnosing breast and colorectal cancer early and initiating treatment in a timely manner. 15 The United States and Sweden had the highest number of breast cancer screenings among women aged 50 to 69, a figure significantly higher than the OECD average.
In contrast, only 43 percent of women aged 50 to 69 underwent screening in France. When it comes to screening for colorectal cancer, the United States exceeded the OECD average and had one of the highest rates. Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, is a common and effective diagnostic imaging technique for diagnosing and tracking treatment for a variety of diseases. The countries that use these specialized explorations the most are the United States.
While the United States spends more on health care than any other high-income country, the nation often performs worse when it comes to health measures and health care. In the case of the U.S. In the United States, the only country we studied that does not have universal health coverage, its health system may seem designed to dissuade people from using services. A second step is to contain costs.
Other countries have achieved better health outcomes and have generally spent much less on healthcare. Policymakers and health systems could consider some of the approaches taken by other countries to contain total health spending, including administrative and health care costs. A third step is to improve the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. For this reason, it is essential to develop the capacity to provide comprehensive, continuous and well-coordinated care. Decades of lack of investment, combined with an inadequate supply of health care providers, have limited many Americans' access to effective primary care.
23 The results of our international comparison demonstrate the importance of a health care system that supports the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, the early diagnosis and treatment of medical problems, affordable access to health care coverage and cost containment, among the key functions of a high performance. Other countries have found ways to do these things right; U.S. Another limitation of our study is that we were unable to disaggregate the data by race and ethnicity. Research has uncovered enormous health disparities in the U.S. Gunja, principal investigator of the International Program for Innovations in Health Policy and Practices, The Commonwealth Fund International, international surveys, quality of care, coverage and access, costs and expenses, health outcomes.
Lung function naturally worsens with age, and COPD worsens the problem. Dr. Syed Nazeer Mahmood, Bayhealth Pulmonologist, Shares More Information. Patients are more likely to eat healthier when presented with dietary options that align with their cultural traditions, says Dr.
Stephen Devries, an AMA member. Find information about CPT category I vaccination codes. Help your organization improve in important areas of practice, such as workflow, teamwork, and physician well-being, with guidance from our medical leaders. Residency programs must teach the ethical standards that accompany clinical trials.
An AMA educational module helps this teaching process. Understand the evolving field of health systems science and acquire the tools and skills needed to successfully share this approach with medical students. The latest NRMP survey shows how program managers actually use the signals sent by residency applicants. Learn how to create a smart signage strategy.
Find information about the responsibilities and terms of service of the standing committees of the Medical Student Section (MSS) and how to submit an application. From interns to senior residents, every step of the GME presents new challenges. These tips can help you overcome them like an experienced professional. Exclusive data from the AMA shows that residents' well-being is on an upward trend.
Delve into what is going well and the great challenges that lie ahead. The AMA supports market integrity efforts and asks the administration to reconsider the proposals planned to reduce coverage and more in the latest national promotion update. Review the reports and resolutions submitted for consideration at the 2025 annual meeting of the AMA House of Delegates. Apply for a leadership position by submitting the required documentation before the deadline. See how CSAPH works to represent the AMA's fundamental belief that scientific evidence is the basis for improving the quality of patient care.
Take a leadership role in the RFS and contribute to the problems faced by residents and fellows, patients, and the medical profession. Find the PDF agenda, documents and more for the 2025 MSS annual meeting to be held on June 6 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Whyte brings digital knowledge, knowledge about health policies and clinical experience to shape a new era in medicine. The AMA is your powerful ally, focusing on addressing the issues that matter to you, so you can focus on what matters most to patients.
We will face this challenge together. The report analyzes this breakdown in more detail and also evaluates spending by source of funds (i.e., the AMA promotes the art and science of medicine and the improvement of public health).The best of medicine, delivered to your mailbox. Peterson Health Technology Institute Understand the U.S. National Debt In the United States, why it matters and what we can do.
Learn about the federal budget Learn more about the budget, how it's created, and how we can fix our budgeting process. The cost and quality of the U.S. health care system The United States is one of the most important problems faced by Americans every day. It is one of voters' main political concerns, a key indicator of economic efficiency and a major driver of the national debt. The recent release of Health Statistics 2024 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an exhaustive source of comparable statistics on the health systems of OECD member countries, provides policymakers and the public with an idea of how the U.S.
health system compares to that of others. The amount of resources a country allocates to health care varies, as each country has its own political, economic and social attributes that help determine how much it will spend. In general, richer countries, such as the United States, will spend more on health care than less prosperous countries. Therefore, it helps to compare health spending in the United States with that of other comparatively rich countries, those with a gross domestic product (GDP) and a GDP per capita above the median, in relation to all OECD countries. Healthcare costs depend on utilization (the number of services used) and price (the amount charged per service).
An increase in any of those factors can result in increased health care costs. Despite spending nearly twice as much on health care per capita, utilization rates in the United States do not differ significantly from those in other wealthy OECD countries. Prices, therefore, appear to be the main driver of the cost difference between the United States and other rich countries. In fact, prices in the United States tend to be higher regardless of utilization rates. For example, the Peterson-Kaiser health system tracker notes that the United States has shorter hospital stays, fewer angioplasty surgeries and more knee replacements than in comparable countries, but the prices for each are higher in the United States.
A health system with high costs and poor outcomes undermines our economy and threatens our long-term fiscal and economic well-being. Fortunately, there are opportunities to transform the health system into one that produces higher-quality care at a lower cost. For more information on potential reforms, visit our solutions page and the Peterson Center on Healthcare. The role of Medicaid in state budgets is unique, as the program acts both as an expense and as the largest source of federal support in state budgets.
Healthcare spending in the United States is a key factor in the country's fiscal imbalance and has increased markedly in recent decades. Read and share ideas about the issues we're facing. The independent source for research, surveys and news on health policies. Have healthcare costs changed over time? Trends in Health Spending What Factors Contribute to U.S. Health Care Spending UU.? Factors that drive health spending How does healthcare spending vary among the population? Variation in spending What impact do healthcare costs have on financial vulnerability? Impact on financial vulnerability How much is healthcare spending expected to increase? Expected spending growth Health care costs in the United States have generally grown faster than inflation.
Per capita health spending far exceeds other large, rich countries, and health care represents a much larger proportion of the U.S. economy. High healthcare spending in the U.S. Rising health care costs contribute to many people having difficulty paying for health care and medications, even among those with insurance.
The health system is facing disparities and gaps in coverage. Many people are familiar with the high and rising cost of healthcare in the United States by seeing how much they spend on their own health insurance premiums and on out-of-pocket expenses. In addition to these obvious health costs, there is also tax money that goes to fund public programs and the amounts that employers spend to pay for their employees' health insurance premiums. Total national health expenditures include expenditures for public programs and private health plans, as well as out-of-pocket health expenses.
Total health expenses represent the amount spent on health care (such as doctor visits, hospitalizations, and prescription drugs) and related activities (such as overhead expenses and insurance profits, health research and infrastructure, and public health). Today, health care accounts for about 17% of the U.S. (measured as a percentage of gross domestic product or GDP). In other words, nearly 1 out of every 5 dollars spent in the U.S.
In 1960, health spending represented only 5% of GDP, meaning that 1 out of every 20 dollars in the U.S. economy was spent on health care. Out-of-pocket costs have also increased over time. Out-of-pocket costs represent the amount of money people spend on health care that isn't paid for by a health insurance plan or a public program such as Medicare or Medicaid. Copays, deductibles and coinsurance), as well as the health expenses of uninsured people or the expenses of people insured for care that health insurance doesn't cover at all.
Out-of-pocket expenses don't include the amount spent on a person's monthly health insurance premium. Over the past few decades, health spending has been driven upward by a number of factors, including, but not limited to, the aging of the population, rising rates of chronic diseases, advances in medicine and new technologies, higher prices and the expansion of health insurance coverage. While there are always differences between countries, many of these factors drive rising health costs in the U.S. In the United States, they are also driving the growth of health costs in counterpart countries.
In fact, the population is aging and that is driving up health costs. Many large and rich nations have populations that age even more rapidly. Other factors may explain the relatively high healthcare expenditure of the United States compared to that of its peers. The health system is fragmented, with many public and private payers, and the regulation of these payers is divided between states and the federal government. However, these features aren't unique to the U.S.
In fact, some other countries with much lower health spending have multiple private payers or differences in public programs between states or provinces. Nor is it the only one that has a payment system based primarily on the payment of fees. for service. The health insurance system is largely voluntary, while the health systems of counterpart countries are almost completely mandatory.
In general, federal and state governments have done less to regulate or directly negotiate the prices paid for medical services or prescription drugs than the governments of equally large and wealthy nations. They often pay higher prices for the same prescription drugs, hospital procedures and brand-name health care than equally large, wealthy countries. There are other factors, largely beyond the control of the health system, that are probably also at play, such as socioeconomic conditions (such as income inequality and other social determinants of health) and differences in so-called lifestyle factors (such as diet, drug use or physical activity), which could contribute both to increasing spending and to worsening spending the results. Dividing total national health spending into its components can reveal what are the main factors driving health costs and where cost-containment efforts could be most effective.
The charts below show several ways to examine the main factors that contribute to health spending. For example, national health spending accounts show trends in how health spending varies by type of service (for example, retail sale of prescription drugs) or by source of funds (e.g.An alternative and relatively new approach to understanding health spending is to break down total health spending into the proportion that goes to the treatment of certain diseases (for example, health spending) and utilization (for example, the dollar amount of a hospital stay) and utilization (for example, an alternative way to examine the components of health spending is to use the satellite health care account of the Office of Economic Analysis (BEA), which estimates spending and price growth by category of illness (e.g.This approach differs from the official categorization of health spending by type of service (e.g., the new satellite account redefines the “basic product” of health care as the treatment of specific diseases, rather than a hospital stay or a doctor's visit). BEA researchers found that the main categories of spending on medical services include treatment of circulatory diseases (10.4% of healthcare spending in 2002), musculoskeletal diseases (9.4%) and infectious diseases (9.0%). Another significant part of healthcare spending (15.1%) goes to “ill-defined diseases”, which may include routine checkups and follow-up care that are not easy to assign to a disease in particular.
Spending on health services generally depends on prices (for example, the amount in dollars charged for a hospital stay) and on utilization (for example, individuals and health plans in the U.S. UU.) They often pay higher prices for the same prescription drugs or hospital procedures than in other large, wealthy countries. Meanwhile, there isn't much evidence that people in the U.S. In fact, Americans generally have shorter average hospital stays and fewer doctor visits per capita. Therefore, much of the difference in healthcare spending between the United States and its peers can be explained by rising prices, rather than increased utilization. However, over time in the U.S.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, the growth in healthcare prices far outpaced the growth in usage. Fastest growth in healthcare prices in the U.S. During this time, it fueled the divergence in per capita health spending between the U.S. And other large and rich OECD countries.
Health care prices have grown more moderately in recent decades, and the prices of health services continue to exceed what other countries pay. A small part of the population accounts for a large part of health spending in a given year. While we tend to focus on averages, few people spend around the average, as individual health needs vary across the lifespan. Some parts of the population (older adults and people with serious or chronic illnesses) require more health services and are more expensive than younger, healthier, or people who need fewer services or are less expensive. People with significant health needs account for a large part of total health spending.
People who report having a normal or poor state of health represent 10% of the population and 29% of total health expenditure. When health care is unaffordable, it can create cost-related barriers to access for people, such as giving up or delaying needed medical care. For those receiving care, this care can lead to medical debt and other forms of financial instability. Some people face affordability issues because they don't get some of the care they need and they incur medical debt for other types of care.
Adults say it's hard to afford health care (chart), and one in four say they or a family member have had trouble paying for health care in the past 12 months (chart 1). People with lower incomes, people in regular or poor health, and people without insurance are particularly likely to report problems paying for health care over the past year. Among those under 65, uninsured adults are more likely to say that it is difficult to pay for health care costs (85%) compared to those with health insurance coverage (47%).Those with health insurance coverage are not immune to the burden of health care costs. About 4 out of 10 insured adults worry about being able to afford their monthly health insurance premium, and 48% worry about paying their deductible before their health insurance takes effect.
A large proportion of adults with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) and those with Marketplace coverage rate their insurance as “regular” or “poor” in terms of the monthly premium and out-of-pocket costs to see a doctor. According to a KFF survey, a quarter of adults say that, in the past 12 months, they have skipped or postponed the medical care they needed due to costs. Women are more likely than men to say they haven't received health care or have postponed it (28%) compared to people 65 and older, most of whom are eligible for health care coverage through Medicare, are much less likely than younger age groups to say they haven't received the health care they needed because of costs. Six out of 10 uninsured adults (61%) say they don't receive medical care or have postponed it for financial reasons.
In addition, insured individuals are not immune to cost-related barriers to accessing care, as 1 in 5 insured adults (21%) still report not receiving the medical care they needed due to cost. Even though the vast majority of the U.S. population has health insurance, medical debt is common. Different ways of measuring medical debt result in different estimates of prevalence, but regardless of the method, there is consensus that medical debt is a persistent and pervasive problem in the United States, even for people with insurance.
One way to analyze medical debt is to submit credit reports, but medical debt is often disguised as other forms of debt when people pay medical bills with their credit cards or choose to pay them off while falling behind on other payments. Another way to measure medical debt is through surveys, which allow respondents to describe their debt in a more detailed and nuanced way. Questions about medical debt and other financial issues can be difficult to compare between surveys. For example, it's not always clear if respondents respond about their personal experiences or about their family or home in general.
Surveys may also differ in how they define medical debt or describe what forms of debt to include. In the KFF health debt survey, respondents were asked to think about the money they currently owed for their own medical or dental care or that of another person, such as a family member or dependent. The KFF healthcare debt survey reveals that 41% of adults currently have some type of debt caused by their own medical or dental bills or those of a family member. The Income and Program Participation Survey (SIPP) asks if each person in the household in the sample owed money to pay a medical bill and had not been paid in full during the previous year.
Therefore, the SIPP results can be analyzed on an individual level or for a general household. This survey shows that approximately 1 in 12 adults has medical debt for their own health care in the past year. Regardless of which survey is used to examine medical debt, some common themes emerge when analyzing differences between demographic groups. Black, uninsured, low-income, and poorer health people are more likely to have medical debt.
In particular, people with disabilities are much more likely to have significant medical debt, which, in addition to the burden of medical costs, could also reflect an inadequate supplementary income for people who are unable to work due to a disability or illness. The National Financial Capability Survey (NFCS) is a triennial survey sponsored by the FINRA Foundation that provides information on the financial security, experiences and vulnerabilities of individuals and homes. The pandemic has had direct and indirect effects on the health system that can hinder projections. COVID-19 has generated new costs for vaccination, testing and treatment, and has also caused other changes in health utilization and spending.
Some people avoided going to medical centers for fear of contracting COVID and therefore skipped or delayed routine care or cancer screening early in the pandemic. This could result in cumulative demand, worsening health conditions, or more complex treatment for the disease in the future. The increase in the use of telemedicine could also change spending patterns in the future. In addition, recent generalized inflation trends in the economy and employment trends in the health sector also increase the uncertainty of these projections.
The independent source for health policy research, polls and news, KFF is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California.
