John Stossel, who took apart the World Health Organization’s lowballing of U.S. health care, similarly registers his low opinion of another health ranking, this by the Commonwealth Fund. The Commonwealth Fund compares the U.S. medical system with five other wealthy nations' systems—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain—and concludes, "Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms."Stossel notes:
The report concedes that if insured, “patients in the U.S. have rapid access to specialized health care services." That helps explain why U.S. outcomes for such diseases as prostate and breast cancer are markedly better than in Canada's and Britain's socialized systems. The U.S. is the center of medical innovation for the world. When internists ranked the world's top 10 medical innovations, eight were developed thanks to American innovations. The Commonwealth Fund ignores this, focusing on the problems of the U.S. uninsured.
The study divides "quality" into right care, safe care, coordinated care and patient-centered care. While the U.S. was 5th or 6th in the last three, it ranked first in "right care.” "Right care" is the most important because it includes things like how often women have mammograms and whether diabetics get proper treatment.
Based on telephone interviews with patients and doctors, the study grades nations on people's perceptions. Yet patients who live in a country with long waits for medical care and bureaucratic inefficiency likely have lower expectations.
The study's authors consider having high administrative costs and spending the largest share of GDP on health care worse than having the highest share of patients who wait four months or more for surgery—a bias designed to hurt the U.S.
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