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It's
the Price, Stupid
Why
the United States Is So Different from Other Countries
Americans
spend considerably more money on health care services than any
other industrialized nation, but the increased expenditure does
not buy more care, according to a study by researchers at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
They
found that the United States spent 44 percent more on health care
than Switzerland, the nation with the next highest per capita
health care costs, in the year 2000. At the same time, Americans
had fewer physician visits, and hospital stays were shorter compared
with most other industrialized nations. The study suggests that
the difference in spending is caused mostly by higher prices for
health care goods and services in the United States. The results
are published in the May/June 2003 edition of Health Affairs.
As a
country, we need to ask whether increased spending means more
resources for patients or simply higher incomes for health care
providers, said Gerard Anderson, PhD, lead study author
and professor of in the Schools departments of Health Policy
and Management and International Health. Policymakers should
assess exactly what Americans are getting for their greater health
care spending. In economics, these are known as opportunity costs
because you can spend the money in different ways, said
Dr. Anderson.
For the study,
Dr. Anderson and his colleagues compared health systems data of
the 30 industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) from the year 2000, which are
the most recent data available. The authors examined the factors
contributing to higher health care prices in the United States.
They also compared pharmaceutical spending, health system capacity,
and use of medical services.
According
to the study, U.S. per capita health spending rose to $4,631 in
2000, which was an increase of 6.3 percent over the previous year.
The U.S. level was 83 percent higher than Canada and 134 percent
higher than the median of $1,983 in the other OECD member nations.
The researchers
found that the health care spending gap between the United States
and other industrialized countries widened between 1990 and 2000,
despite efforts to control spending with managed care.
The study
also found that the United States spent 13 percent of the nations
gross domestic product (GNP) on health care in 2000, which was
considerably higher than other nations. In contrast, Switzerland
spent 10.7 percent of its GNP on health care, while Canada spent
9.1 percent. The median spending level for the OECD nations was
8 percent. American private spending per capita on health care
was $2,580, which was more than five times the OECD median of
$451. In addition, the United States financed 56 percent of its
health care from private sources, which was the greatest amount
of the OECD countries.
According
to the study, public financing of health care from sources like
Medicare and Medicaid accounted for 5.8 percent of U.S. GDP in
2000, which is similar to the OECD median of 5.9 percent. However,
the United States spent $2,051 of public funds per person, which
was much more than the OECD median of $1,502. In most of the other
OECD countries the public health care expenditures cover everyone,
unlike the United States.
Its
the Price, Stupid: Why the United States Is so Different from
Other Countries, was written by Gerard F. Anderson, Uwe
E. Reinhardt, Peter S. Hussey, and Varduhi Petrosyan.
Source: Temple
University & Wake Forest University
More
Resources to Health Cost Concerns around the Web:
Health
Costs in the News
U.S.
Health Spending vs. that of Other Nations
also
see in Your Money -> Health
Insurance
State
of Your Health - Reports & Rankings of Health Care by US State
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