Quality Health Care

Abstract

The U.S. has worse mortality rates than virtually all other developed nations, and yet it spends twice as much per capita on health care. How on earth has the U.S. racked up such an appallingly bad healthcare record, and what is the solution? A recent edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) identified many of the problems but was not persuasive in prescribing a cure.Let's look at what ails the U.S. health-care system and the difficulties one encounters when trying to fix it. Three solutions -transparent pricing, telemedicine, and resource rationing -could help improve cost and quality problems that the U.S. health care industry faces today. A litany of underperformanceThe Nov. 13 JAMA confirms the basic fact that the U.S. spends twice as much as other developed nations do on healthcare but has worse outcomes.As reported in an article in The Atlantic earlier this year, the United States has higher mortality rates in all population categories than do 16 other developed nations: