Despite heavy spending, the US healthcare system performs worse than most high-income countries

The finding: When it comes to meeting citizens’ basic healthcare needs, the US healthcare system lags considerably behind those of other high-income countries, according to a recent Commonwealth Fund report.

• The Commonwealth Fund compared healthcare system performance in 10 countries and analyzed 70 measures across five performance areas: access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes.

Digging into the details: Despite spending more on healthcare than the report’s other countries, the US ranks last, or next-to-last, in nearly all performance areas.

• Of the 10 studied nations, the US came in dead last in both access to care and health outcomes.