The U.S. may have just passed an historic health care reform bill, but compared to 11 other rich nations it still lags far behind.
As The Atlanticreports, a new study released today by the Commonwealth Fund looks at health care in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom and found that America scored low in many key areas and last overall.
The report took into account quality care, access, efficiency, equity, healthy lives, and expenditures, ranking each country in both individual categories and overall care.
The United Kingom's single-payer system ranked first, while Switzerland came in second. As The Atlantic notes, the Swiss system is quite similar to Obamacare's newly-implemented compulsory health care strategy, with a key exception being that Swiss insurance companies aren't allowed to profit directly from their plans.
The study also looked at how much countries spent on health care compared to overall GDP. Though the U.S. came in last for care, it spends a far greater percentage than other nations—a whopping 17.7 percent. To put that in perspective, Australia spends nearly half as much.
[via The Atlantic]
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