What’s your opinion of the US healthcare system? Most people think it’s a mess, and if you look at the statistics, it doesn’t always look positive. A lack of staffing, no beds, burnout staff, the list could go on. Still, it’s not much different to any other healthcare system. Just look at the NHS.
But let’s not forget that the US healthcare system has over twice as much spending per capita than other industrialized nations. Americans endure some of the worst health outcomes in the world, and nearly 30 million people still don’t have insurance or access to necessary care.
Read on to learn more about it.
Sky-High Costs and Poor Patient Outcomes
The US is one of the most expensive countries for healthcare. It costs, on average, about $13,000 per person annually. But what do we get for that investment? Not enough. Americans die younger than people in other countries with well-developed healthcare systems like the UK. The US has one of the worst rankings of maternal and infant mortality rates, and it doesn’t help that many are uninsured or underinsured, making already severe disparities even worse across the board.
But here’s another story behind those numbers: people are going broke paying medical bills, while insurers report record profits and drug companies hand out multi-million dollar bonuses – does that surprise you? This profit-driven approach to health care has created a system that sometimes seems to care more about money.
Primary Care is Broken
Millions of Americans live without access to basic primary care because there simply aren’t enough physicians where they live – many hospitals rely on a physician recruiter to fill the shifts. And even if there were enough, the average waiting time to visit a doctor’s clinic in the US is months – that doesn’t account for more rural areas. What this means is that far too many people end up using emergency rooms for routine visits, and we can’t blame them – health insurance should be paying for timely care.
Most developed countries spend between 10% and 18% of their healthcare budgets on primary care. The US spends less than 7%. When you don’t invest adequately in prevention or early intervention, you’re left with expensive hospital stays and specialist visits.
Workforce Shortages
That isn’t restricted to the US, but the US is suffering. If you’ve read the studies, they’re alarming. Within a decade, we’ll need over 120,000 more physicians and general practitioners. The nursing shortage is so acute that we may need anywhere from 200,000 to 450,000 more nurses in just the next few years, not to mention our deficit of 100,000 dentists and mental health professionals.
And when there aren’t enough staff members to go around, those who do work are stretched thin, which can lead to burnout. Sick people also have to wait longer for care, sometimes with fatal consequences. The quality of care naturally suffers across the board if staff lack time or resources. The list of issues associated with workforce shortages could go on. Without a solid foundation of workers, it’s impossible to improve the American healthcare system.
So, what do you think about the US healthcare system? Most of us have been part of it at some point in our lives, and you should have noticed how much must be improved.