Are you frustrated with the U.S. health care “system” and want to make changes? You can make a difference by becoming a health policy expert who focuses on comparing health care systems in different countries. Goals would be to understand why systems are the way they are, their pros and cons and any lessons learned from each one that could be applied to improving health care in the U.S. (and other countries) and/to help apply those lessons.
As an example, here is a comparison of five countries’ health systems (copied from the Commonwealth Fund’s website):
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care
May 15, 2007
K. Davis, C. Schoen, S. C. Schoenbaum, M. M. Doty, A. L. Holmgren, J. L. Kriss, and K. K. Shea, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care, The Commonwealth Fund, May 2007Overview
Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to two earlier editions—includes data from surveys of patients, as well as information from primary care physicians about their medical practices and views of their countries’ health systems. Compared with five other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes. The inclusion of physician survey data also shows the U.S. lagging in adoption of information technology and use of nurses to improve care coordination for the chronically ill.
A quick overview of the Canadian health care system.
