Health

US Healthcare: Long Waits and High Spending

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ June 26, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

BusinessWeek reports that the widely held view that wait times in the US healthcare system are not necessarily lower than in the rest of the world:

One of the most repeated truisms about the U.S. health-care system is that, for all its other problems, American patients at least don’t have to endure the long waits for medical care that are considered endemic under single-payer systems such as those in Canada and Britain. But as several surveys and numerous anecdotes show, waiting times in the U.S. are often as bad or worse as those in other industrialized nations—despite the fact that the U.S. spends considerably more per capita on health care than any other country. In addition, 48 million people without insurance do not have ready access to the system.

One disturbing study published last year by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco found average waits of 38.2 days to get an appointment with a dermatologist to check out a possibly cancerous mole.

Note that the U.S. spends the most on healthcare. According to the Progressive Policy Institute, it was 15.2% of GDP in 2004. The U.S. also spends significantly more on a per capita basis. In 2003, per capita spending was 5,635 USD (adjusted for PPP), more than twice the OECD average of 2,307 USD. For a global comparison, the OECD average was 8.6% (see table for other countries).

The reasons for this, and other problems are also interesting to note. For one, BusinessWeek notes that only a third of U.S. doctors are family doctors or general practitioners, compared to half in Europe. The OECD also notes that health care resources are generally scarcer in the U.S. despite the high expenditures: “In 2002, the United States had 2.3 practising physicians per 1,000 population, below the OECD average of 2.9. The number of acute care hospital beds in the United States in 2003 was 2.8 per 1 000 population, also lower than the OECD average of 4.1 beds per 1 000 population.”

For more on U.S. healthcare expenditures, the Kaiser Family Foundation offers an excellent set of trends and indicators.

Prior coverage on U.S. healthcare:

1. The Dilemna of Privatizing Healthcare
2. Big Pharma Attacks Michael Moore