US Spends More on Healthcare than Other Countries, but Quality of Care Lags

The United States spends more on health care than 12 other industrialized countries yet does not provide “notably superior” care, according to a new study from The Commonwealth Fund (New York, USA).  David Squires reports that the U.S. spent nearly $8,000 per person in 2009 on health care services, while other countries in the study spent between one-third (Japan and New Zealand) and two-thirds (Norway and Switzerland) as much. Higher prices and greater use of technology appear to be the main factors driving the high rates of U.S. spending, rather than greater use of physician and hospital services. While the U.S. performs well on breast and colorectal cancer survival rates, it has among the highest rates of potentially preventable deaths from asthma and amputations due to diabetes, and rates that are no better than average for in-hospital deaths from heart attack and stroke.