Summary: A national poll of US adults yields terrible scores for our healthcare system: more “poor” and “fail” marks than “excellent” and “good”. The Gallup organization calls these Cs and Ds, but that’s a generous interpretation – we’re failing. We need a total do-over, adopting methods proven in other wealthy nations.
Majorities Rate Cost, Equity of U.S. Healthcare Negatively, Gallup News – Politics, October 6, 2022, by Nicole Willcoxon
Comment:
By Jim Kahn, M.D., M.P.H.
Yowzah. That’s massive under-performance. Only 21% of US adults think our healthcare system grade is good or excellent. Only 7% for costs, 22% for equity, and 31% for access. Quality of care scores highest – 47% say it’s good or excellent. But what is quality without access?
Sad, but not surprising. Indeed, we’ve performed at the bottom of wealthy countries for a long time. See HJM on the latest Commonwealth comparison here, and cross-national satisfaction surveys here and here.
If only we had better examples of how to pay for healthcare. If we could find, somewhere in the world, places that spend less while faring much better on access and outcomes. Oh, wait, all those countries that do better, they also cost a lot less.
Sorry I’m dripping with sarcasm today. It’s SO frustrating that we don’t learn our lesson. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “Americans always do the right thing, after first trying everything else.” Well, we’ve tried everything else. Time to do the right thing – single payer!
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