Analysts at the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that supports health policy research, have taken a new look at the U.S. health care system and continue to find it lacking.
The analysts compared the U.S. system with the health care systems in nine other wealthy countries.
The analysts ranked the U.S. system worst overall and Australia the best.
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The U.S. system came in second best for the "care process," or the actual quality of care, but it ranked ninth or 10th on the other indicators: health outcomes, equity, administrative efficiency and access to care.
The United States is ranked last on life expectancy, for example.
"Care access," the indicator that includes health insurance, also includes factors such as patients' ability to schedule timely appointments and their ability to get urgent care outside of regular medical office hours.
The five top countries for care access are the Netherlands, which ranked first in spite of Dutch residents' bitter complaints about being unable to find primary care doctors taking new patients, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and New Zealand.
For a look at the five countries the analysts rated worst for care access see the gallery above.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
