The U.S. Health System in Perspective: A Comparison of Twelve Industrialized Nations
David A. Squires
Abstract: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tracks and reports on more than 1,200 health system measures across 34 industrialized countries. This analysis concentrated on 2010 OECD health data for Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Health care spending in the U.S. towers over the other countries. The U.S. has fewer hospital beds and physicians, and sees fewer hospital and physician visits, than in most other countries. Prescription drug utilization, prices, and spending all appear to be highest in the U.S., as does the supply, utilization, and price of diagnostic imaging. U.S. per- formance on a limited set of quality measures is variable, ranking highly on five-year cancer survival, middling on in-hospital case-specific mortality, and poorly on hospital admissions for chronic conditions and amputations due to diabetes. Findings suggest opportunities for cross- national learning to improve health system performance.
Treating the Cause, Not the Illness
By DAVID BORNSTEINFixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work.
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In 1965, in an impoverished rural county in the Mississippi Delta, the pioneering physician Jack Geigerhelped found one of the nation’s first community health centers. Many of the children Geiger treated were seriously malnourished, so he began writing “prescriptions” for food — stipulating quantities of milk, vegetables, meat, and fruit that could be “filled” at grocery stores, which were instructed to send the bills to the health center, where they were paid out of the pharmacy budget. When word of this reached the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, which financed the center, an official was dispatched to Mississippi to reprimand Geiger and make sure he understood that the center’s money could be used only for medical purposes. Geiger replied: “The last time I looked in my textbooks, the specific therapy for malnutrition was food.” The official had nothing to say and returned to Washington.
Defying a Stereotype With Gourmet Dishes
By WENDY CARLSON
NEW MILFORD, Conn.
IT’S lunchtime in New Milford and Mayor Patricia Murphy is dining in the most unlikely place: the hospital cafe.
The pecan-crusted chicken tucked beneath a fresh sage velouté did not pique Ms. Murphy’s interest, nor did the celery root bisque with its subtle essence of fennel. Instead, she made a beeline for the chicken salad with tart cranberries, fresh herbs and toasted almonds.
“Sometimes I find myself sitting at my desk thinking I’ve just got to have some of that chicken salad; it’s the best,” Ms. Murphy said.
Single Payer Ahead -- Cost Control and the Evolving Vermont Model
By Anya Rader Wallack, Ph.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine, July 20, 2011
The New England Journal of Medicine, July 20, 2011
Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont recently signed into law ambitious health care reform legislation that puts Vermont on course to implement a single-payer health care system. The law creates a Health Benefit Exchange, consistent with the federal Affordable Care Act, and anticipates using it as the administrative structure for a publicly funded program of health insurance coverage for all Vermonters. The Shumlin administration believes that a single-payer system offers the greatest promise for reducing administrative waste and hassle in our health care system, guaranteeing coverage to everyone in the state, and relieving employers of the increasingly crushing burden of health insurance costs.
The Empty Bully Pulpit
Posted: 7/29/11 01:02 PM (From The American Prospect site)
How did we get into this mess?
I thought I'd seen Washington at its worst. I was there just after Watergate. I was there when Jimmy Carter imploded. I was there during the government shut-down of 1995.
But I hadn't seen the worst. This is the worst.
How can it be that with over 9 percent unemployment, essentially no job growth, widening inequality, falling real wages, and an economy that's almost dead in the water -- we're locked in a battle over how to cut the budget deficit?
Part of the answer is a Republican Party that's the most irresponsible and rigidly ideological I've ever witnessed.
Part of the answer is the continuing gravitational pull of the Great Recession.
But another part of the answer lies with the president -- and his inability or unwillingness to use the bully pulpit to tell Americans the truth, and mobilize them for what must be done.
