According to research, the American public does not think their health care is measuring up. A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation polled the American public’s opinion of the current quality of health care in the U.S. and found that 51% were not satisfied. Additionally, another study from the Commonwealth Fund found that 76% of its respondents nationwide felt that the current health care system either needed to be fundamentally changed, or completely remodeled. These findings illustrate the clear dissatisfaction of the American public in the quality of U.S. health care.
In Addition to the public’s disappointment with American health care, scholars are also finding that our system is in crisis. In an international study done by the researchers at the Commonwealth Fund, the United States health care system was evaluated in terms of “quality, access, equity, and the capacity of the system to enable people to live long, healthy, and productive lives.” So how did we measure up? On this 100 point survey, the United States scored 66 points! That is 33% below number 5 ranked country in the 6 country comparison. Now, let’s compare shall we. When considering your selection of restaurants to eat dinner at, would you accept a restaurant with a ranking of 66/100 on the quality of food? Absolutely not. When purchasing a car, would you buy the vehicle that received a 66/100 on quality of performance? I certainly hope not.
It is clear that the health care system of the U.S. is not providing the quality of medical care we would expect for $1.9 trillion, but how much money does poor quality medical care really cost us? Well, scholars at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality quantified the conservative death toll due to medical error to be 45,000 people per year. While this may not sound like a lot, these medical errors cost you $37.6 billion per year, $17 billion of which is associated with preventable errors. So what does this mean?
For starters:
Congratulations America, for only $ 17 billion a year, these medical errors are delivering to us the 8th leading cause of death in our country, beating motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, and AIDs.
All sarcasm aside, quality of American health care is a serious issue and one that calls for Americans, politicians, and health care officials to take action in assuring that the public gets the best health care available. While political officials have organized many programs through the Department of Health and Human Services such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, that do investigate these quality control issues, perhaps another element for control is to listen to the public.
If a majority, even if it is slight, is recommending fundamental or complete system reform, perhaps our best hope in ensuring quality health care is to further examine the systems of other countries that are working. In the measure of infant mortality, the United States ranks 27th out of the 33 countries evaluated. However, countries such as Canada and Sweden operate on a socialized or “universal health care” system, and rank 23rd (Canada) and 1st (Sweden) respectively(Cockerham, 2007,p.326). With the rates of infant mortality considerably lower in these countries, we should take notice and further investigate these system alternatives as supplement or solution, as they both spend over $3,000 per person per year less than the Unites States, and yet show better quality of care.
