• Karen Davis, Cathy Schoen, Katherine Shea, and Christine Haran.
• The Commonwealth Fund, USA.
• J Law Med Ethics. 2008 Jan 1; 36 (4): 629-43, 607.

AbstractPolicy officials often assert that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world, but a recent scorecard on U.S. health system performance finds that the U.S. achieves a score of only 65 out of a possible 100 points on key indicators of performance in five key domains: healthy lives, access, quality, equity, and efficiency, where 100 represents the best achieved performance in other countries or within the U.S. The U.S. should aim higher by adopting a set of policies that will extend affordable health insurance to all; align financial incentives for health care providers to enhance value and achieve savings; organize the health care system around the patient to ensure that care is accessible and coordinated; meet and raise benchmarks for high-quality, efficient care; and ensure accountable national leadership and public-private collaboration. The incoming president and Congress should aspire to have the best health system in the world--not just assert it--and can do so by learning from examples of excellence within the U.S. and abroad.

17 keywords...

hide…