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fortune.com/2025/02/03/us-health-care-spending-life-expectancy/
America is a laboratory of failed capitalist experiments, but because society is organized around an axis prioritizing "free markets" over public health, we're trading our time on earth for corporate profit. If money is being made in this system, then failure means we have to keep on failing.
There are strategies to improve healthcare, but US isn't trying them.
An updated analysis comparing healthcare systems across 20 countries finds once again that the US system is an outstandingly poor performer, summarized as being a “persistent failure” for its high costs, poor health outcomes, and premature deaths.
“Americans pay more for health care, get less in return, and remain far more exposed to illness, debt, and insecurity than their peers,” the report concludes.
The report comes from The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation focused on healthcare system performance, which periodically conducts such comparative analyses. The new report is based on 2024 data and compares the US to 19 countries, including many in Europe, as well as Australia, Canada, Chile, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
As has long been the case, the US spends far more on healthcare than any other of the 19 countries. In 2024, the US spent 18 percent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, nearly twice the average of all the countries, which was 9.3 percent. The second-highest spender after the US was Germany, with 12.3 percent.
Drilling down, the US spends far more on care per person than other countries and spends more on prescription medications. Americans are, by far, the most likely to skip medications, treatments, tests, and consultations due to costs.
US life expectancy at birth ranked third lowest, at 79 years, while the average was 81.2 years. Only Turkey and Mexico had lower life expectancies, which were 77.3 and 75.5, respectively. The highest life expectancies were in Spain (84 years), Japan (84.1 years), and Switzerland (84.3 years).
Uniquely bad
The US had the second-highest avoidable mortality rate—deaths caused by conditions that can be prevented with primary care or treated with timely medical intervention. Only Mexico had higher avoidable mortality. Similarly, the US also had the second-highest rating on years of potential life lost, a measure used to estimate premature death. Again, only Mexico had a higher rating.
The report highlighted critical weaknesses in the US healthcare system, including having the fewest primary care providers of all countries in the analysis. The US has 0.3 primary care providers per 1,000 people, while the overall average is 1.1 providers per 1,000, and the highest-ranking countries, Australia and the Netherlands, have 1.8. The US produces new physicians at one of the lowest rates and also has among the lowest hospital bed capacity levels.
The poor outcomes from America’s failing health system are not evenly distributed, of course. While the US has a higher maternal death rate than any other country in the study, at nearly 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023, maternal mortality for Black women in the US is 50 deaths per 100,000. The average of all the countries was 9.5, with 11 countries having maternal death rates at less than 5 per 100,000 live births. And, while the US had the third-highest suicide rate of the countries assessed, suicide rates in the rural US are significantly higher and rising. Rural Americans are less likely to have access to doctors and mental health services, the study notes.
The report notes that the US uniquely lacks universal health coverage among high-income peer countries. Mexico was the only other country in the study without universal coverage but has plans in place for universal care starting in 2027.
Overall, other countries have already come up with strategies to address the failings seen in the US health system, including reducing healthcare costs, strengthening primary care, and addressing inequities.
“What’s remarkable is not that alternatives exist, but that the United States has failed to pursue them,” the study concludes.
"Pregnancy shouldn't kill people—in fact, in other rich countries it very rarely does," researcher says.
"New research published Thursday by experts at the University of Colorado Boulder estimates that a nationwide abortion ban of the kind Republican lawmakers are intent on pursuing would increase maternal mortality in the United States by 24%.
Released just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion—triggering total bans in a number of GOP-led states—the analysis uses newly available data from 2020 to show that the "increased exposure to the risks of pregnancy" caused by a federal abortion ban "would cause an increase of 210 maternal deaths per year (24% increase), from 861 to 1071.""
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"The U.S. already has the highest maternal mortality rate among rich nations. A recent study by the Commonwealth Fund found that "although most are preventable, maternal deaths have been increasing in the United States since 2000."
"In 2018, there were 17 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in the U.S.—a ratio more than double that of most other high-income countries," the study noted. "In contrast, the maternal mortality ratio was three per 100,000 or fewer in the Netherlands, Norway, and New Zealand."
Amanda Jean Stevenson, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder and the lead author of the new analysis, told the Denver Post on Thursday that "pregnancy shouldn't kill people—in fact, in other rich countries it very rarely does.""
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More at the link.
https://twitter.com/NCSE/status/1517303925904453632
"Congress needs to act at the scale of the crisis, and they should start by canceling rent, mortgage, and utility payments for the duration."
About half of the families surveyed said they won't be able to pay their rent, mortgage, or utility bills on May 1 without cutting back on other essentials such as groceries, while 43% percent of the respondents said they also expected to be unable to pay in June.
"This economic crisis is a five-alarm fire and our government is just letting it burn. Millions of families can't afford rent or other basic necessities," said Justin Ruben, co-director of ParentsTogether. "They are begging for relief that, for many, just isn't coming. Congress needs to act at the scale of the crisis, and they should start by canceling rent, mortgage, and utility payments for the duration."
Many households are still anxiously awaiting the arrival of unemployment benefits and the $1,200 one-time payment the federal government is sending to many Americans. But 60% of those surveyed said they had yet to receive either, and more than a quarter said they had already spent their stimulus check.
When it comes to states that should be talking about “getting back to normal,” Iowa should be very, very far down the list. The state is in the middle of a burst of new cases which only accelerated on Tuesday, and University of Iowa researchers are...
...predicting a second wave of infections if states move too quickly. But instead of expressing any concern over the health of the state’s citizens, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds is not only rushing to remove the few social distancing guidelines that were ever put in place for Iowa, she’s making it clear that any workers who fail to show up for jobs out of concern over their health, their family’s health, or anything else that might result from exposure to a disease that has already killed 60,000 Americans, are not protected. They are the opposite of protected. They are deemed to have “voluntarily quit” their jobs.
For anyone who had any doubts about the motivations behind wealthy conservative groups funding “reopen” protests, or right-wing media inflaming people to get out there on the streets, or Donald Trump issuing “liberate” tweets, this is it: purge workers without having to pay unemployment. And you can bet that also includes allowing corporations to pocket emergency relief that was intended to go to employees.
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Because Iowa officials are encouraging companies to report employees who don’t show up promptly, and sent a warning about weekly fines for anyone who attempts to file a “fraudulent claim” of unemployment. All of this, after the federal government has just issued trillions of dollars in emergency funding that is supposed to help workers … but is going to companies.
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The next step: watch how often the media reports on the line outside barbershops that have reopened, or talks to happy restaurant owners who want nothing more than to figure out how they can fit in more people. This is the “Come on in! The water is fine!” stage, in which the majority of people trying to protect their health are portrayed as the kooks, while those going out and taking a deep breath of virus are the new regular folk.
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Create corporate-funded protests. Provide corporate media coverage. Pretend that Republicans are acting in response to the needs of workers, rather than corporations.
And above all else, this whole scheme is designed to screw workers. Screw them. Force them into a no-win situation where they have to literally risk their lives and the lives of others, or walk away without a dime of the unemployment pay they earned. Meanwhile, corporations are sitting on loans that were supposed to go to providing payroll … just guess where that money will end up.
