As November 5 Election Day approaches, Americans, regardless of their political affiliations, are casting their vote with the hope of bringing about positive change.
According to the Pew Research Center, the responsibility of healthcare in the United States is crucial, ranking second behind the economy among voters’ top issues in the election.
This concern appears to be justified as the United States is showing evidence of lacking in its efforts to protect the health of individual citizens and failing to “prevent needless suffering and death,” reported The New England Journal of Medicine.
The Commonwealth Fund stated the “United States has the shortest life expectancy, the highest rates of avoidable deaths, and the highest health care costs of any country.”
The Fund’s latest report, Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System, compared health system performance in 10 countries in five areas: access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes.
The ten countries studied were Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The United States ranked last among the 10 nations in health equity, access to care, and outcomes.
The report noted that 26 million Americans lack health insurance, and almost 25% of working-age Americans cannot afford their healthcare and are considered to have inadequate insurance coverage.
Rising costs have led to an increase in private plan deductibles. Even with insurance, high deductibles and copays prevent many patients from seeking medical attention when needed, leading them to forgo medical tests and follow-up visits and avoid filling prescriptions.
The report also indicates that the shortage of primary care doctors exacerbates accessibility challenges in the United States.
The United States scored well in one area, ranking second in “care process,” behind New Zealand, indicating that this is “the result of the successful provision of preventive services, such as mammograms and flu vaccinations, and an emphasis on patient safety.”
Another interesting takeaway from the study revealed that life expectancy is more than four years below the 10-country average in the United States, adding that the “ongoing substance use crisis and the prevalence of gun violence in the U.S. contribute significantly to its poor outcomes, with more than 100,000 overdose deaths and 43,000 gun-related deaths in 2023 — numbers that are much higher than in other high-income countries.”
“Despite spending a lot on health care, the United States is not meeting one of the principal obligations of a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its residents,” concludes the study.