Oxstones Investment Club™Which major countries are the worst at health care? And how does the U.S. stack up?
In 2000, the World Health Organization embarked on an exhaustive mission to rank the health care systems of 191 countries, with the African nation Sierra Leone ranking dead last and the United States ranking 37th at the time. Since then, however, the WHO has declined to update its rankings. In its stead, The Commonwealth Fund has conducted its own evaluation of various major countries’ health care systems, ranking them broadly by five criteria: quality care, access, efficiency, equity, and the number of people living healthy lives. Its latest report was released in 2014 and included 11 countries in total.
Let’s take a look at the bottom 5 countries counting down and see where they stack up.
Despite neighboring Australia, the fourth best ranked country, New Zealand proved to be near dead last in equity, which measured how often poorer citizens avoided seeing the doctor when sick or didn’t get recommended tests and screenings compared to their well-off counterparts. When it came to the number of citizens living healthy lives, measured by the infant mortality rate as well as healthy life expectancy at age 60, it was also ranked 9th.
On the other hand, it was 2nd with regards to providing effective and coordinated health care.
According to the World Bank, the country spent 11 percent of its GDP on health care expenditures in 2014.
Tags: access, canada, efficiency, equity, france, health-care system, life expectancy, living healthy lives, new zealand, Norway, quality care, USA