Health Care Costs: Americans Pay Most, But Receive Less

Americans spend considerably more money on health care services than any other industrialized nation, but the increased expenditure does not buy more care, according to a recent study.07/05/2003

© PictureDisk/Keith Brofsky

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the USA spent 44 percent more on health care than Switzerland, the nation with the next highest per capita health care costs, in the year 2000. At the same time, Americans had fewer physician visits and hospital stays were shorter compared to most other industrialized nations. The study suggests that the difference in spending is caused mostly by higher prices for health care goods and services in the US.

Gerard Anderson, PhD, lead study author and professor of in the School's departments of Health Policy and Management and International Health. compared health systems data of the 30 industrialized countries in the OECD from the year 2000. The team examined the factors contributing to higher health care prices in the United States. They also compared pharmaceutical spending, health system capacity and use of medical services.

According to the study in the current edition of Health Affair, US per capita health spending rose to $4,631 in 2000, which was an increase of 6.3 percent over the previous year. The U.S. level was 83 percent higher than Canada and 134 percent higher than the median of $1,983 in the other OECD member nations. The health care spending gap between the United States and other industrialized countries widened between 1990 and 2000, despite efforts to control spending with managed care.

Apart from that, the US spent 13 percent of the GNP on health care in 2000, which was considerably higher than the median spending level for the OECD nations' 8 % . American private spending per capita on health care was $2,580, which was more than five times the OECD median of $451. In addition, the United States financed 56 percent of its health care from private sources - the greatest amount of the OECD countries.

MEDICA.de, Source: Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

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