Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund writes in this week's BMJ that the problems of the US healthcare system are growing. She reminds that the US is the only major industrialized nation without universal health insurance, and that the number of uninsured people has increased from 40 million in 2000 to nearly 47 million in 2005.
Excerpt: "The consequences are increasingly well known: inequities in access to care, avoidable mortality and poor quality care, financial burdens on people who are uninsured or underinsured, and lost economic productivity. The US spends twice as much on health care as the median industrialised nation but does not systematically achieve the best quality care..... If the US hopes to achieve a high performance health system that is value for money, it will have to tackle the perplexing problems of access, quality, and cost and overcome considerable political and economic obstacles, as well as institutional resistance to change."
Posted by schwitz at February 16, 2007 08:36 AM | TrackBack