Spending More, Getting Less Coverage

Gerard F. Anderson and Patricia Markovich of Johns Hopkins University have completed Multinational Comparisons of Health System Data, 2008 supported by the Commonwealth Fund.  The report includes an extensive series of charts that illustrate the strengths and weaknesses that exist between health systems.  Over the next several days, I will be including graphic examples from the report.

Today I look at coverage under public programs.  The following chart, combined with yesterday's charts, points out the fallacy of arguments that extending coverage to everyone is unaffordable.  In fact, what is unaffordable, is leaving millions of Americans without coverage.

The following chart shows that many countries cover their entire populations for what the United States spends to cover less than one-third of the population with Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, CHAMPUS, the VA system and the Indian Health Service.  And many of these countries have populations that are substantially older, and need more health care than that of the United States, as seen here or here.  The chart also shows that among the eight nations compared, the United States has the second highest level of out-of-pocket spending for health services, exceeded only by Switzerland.