New study highlights how little bang US gets for the bucks it spends on healthcare

The authors of the study - 'The State of US Health, 1990-2010: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors' - published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) today - write: “ The US spends the most per capita on health care across all countries, lacks universal health coverage, and lags behind other high-income countries for life expectancy and many other health outcome measures. “High costs with mediocre population health outcomes at the national level are compounded by marked disparities across communities, socioeconomic groups, and race and ethnicity groups.” The researchers found that US life expectancy increased from 75.2 years in 1990 to 78.2 years in 2010. However, over the 20-year period studied, the US slipped down the rankings when it came to many key measures of health status. For example, its ranking for age-standardized death rate dropped from 18th to 27 th out of the 34 OECD countries; for age-standardized YLL (years of life lost due to premature mortality) it dropped from 23rd to 28 th ; for age-standardized years lived with disability it went from 5th to 6 th ; for life expectancy at birth it dropped from 20th to 27 th ; and finally for healthy life expectancy it dropped from 14th to 26 th in the ranking. In an accompanying editorial, Harvey V. Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D., of the Institute of Medicine, Washington, D.C., said: “Despite a level of health expenditures that would have seemed unthinkable a generation ago, the health of the US population has improved only gradually and has fallen behind the pace of progress in many other wealthy nations.” The top 10 risk factors for health loss in 2010 and the number of deaths attributable to each in the US were: Click here for full details.

New study highlights how little bang US gets for the bucks it spends on healthcare

A major new study exploring the health status of people in 34 OECD countries (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) from 1990-2010 has revealed that the US has not kept pace with other wealthy nations when it comes to improving the health of its population.

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