Health Care Statistics

The following represents startling statistics on health care in the U.S. most of which can be found in a multitude of sources but I found them very nicely compiled in the White paper from Senator Max Baucus “Call to Action: Health Care Reform 2009”.

The link to Senator Baucas' call to action can be found at the end of this post.

The U.S. spends $2.3 trillion a year on heath care.

The U.S. is the only developed country without health coverage for all of its citizens. An estimated 45.7 million Americans, or 15.3 percent of the population, lacked health insurance in 2007 — up from 38.4 million in 2000.4 Those without health coverage generally experience poorer health and worse health outcomes than those who are insured.

Twenty-three percent forgo necessary care every year due to cost. And a number of studies show that the uninsured are less likely to receive preventive care or even care for traumatic injuries, heart attacks, and chronic diseases.
The Urban Institute reports that 22,000 uninsured adults die prematurely each year as a direct result of lacking access to care.

Eight in ten of the uninsured come from working families. But these workers are either not offered coverage by their employer and cannot access it through a family member, or they do not qualify for employer-offered coverage. For example, they might not be eligible because they work part-time.
Medical debt contributes to half of all filed bankruptcies, and affects approximately two million people a year.

QUALITY: POOR RETURN ON OUR HUGE INVESTMENT

Despite high levels of spending on health care, the U.S. ranks last out of 19 industrialized countries in unnecessary deaths.32 America ranks 29th out of 37 countries for infant mortality — tied with Slovakia and Poland, and below Cuba and Hungary.33 The United States has almost double the infant mortality rate of France or Germany.34

A recent study by the Institute of Medicine concluded that the current health care system is not making progress toward improving quality or containing costs for patients or providers.35 Research documenting poor quality of care received by patients in the U.S. is shocking. A 2003 RAND Corporation study found that adults received recommended care for many illnesses only 55 percent of the time. Needed care for diabetes was delivered only 45 percent of the time and for pneumonia only 39 percent of the time. Patients with breast cancer fared better, but still did not receive recommended care one-quarter of the time.

U.S. Senator Max Baucus, "Call to Action: Health Care Reform 2009," November 12, 2008, at http://finance.senate.gov/healthreform2009/finalwhitepaper.pdf (November 14, 2008)