November 18, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Aaron CarrollThis post has been cited in the 9 December 2010 edition of Health Wonk Review.
One last chart from the new paper in Health Affairs that describes a recent Commonwealth Fund survey in eleven countries. I’m not going to describe the methods again, as I’ve now done so two times.
What you are looking is a graph showing you the percent of people who say that they have experienced at least one access barrier to care because of the cost. Surveyors told each participant the median income in their respective country and then asked them if their income was above or below that – and then referred to that as above or below “average”. The green bars represent those with “below average” income; the blue bars represent those with “above average” income.
It’s not just that more people in the US report access issues because of cost than any other country. It’s that even those with “above average” incomes experience these barriers. In fact, more people with “above average” incomes in the US experience cost-related access issues than people with “below average” incomes in seven of the other ten countries. It’s not just that our poorer citizens can’t afford the care; our wealthier citizens can’t either.
Last time – who thinks this system is great?
Comments closed
by Austin Frakt on November 18th, 2010 at 14:01
I would hope we could discuss this and all other posts without resorting to name calling or baseless presumptions of motivations. (Some comments already deleted. See the comments policy.) Long-time readers of this blog know that neither Aaron nor I think there is a perfect solution to the problems he illustrates. We’re equal-opportunity, evidence-based realists.
by Floccina on November 18th, 2010 at 19:22
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/09/scream-this-fro.html
“Scream this from the rooftops, a continuing series
Indeed, the health-income gradient is slightly steeper in Canada than it is in the U.S.
Here is the paper (can anyone find a non-gated version?), which offers many other interesting points of comparison between the two systems. Here are previous installments in the series.”
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13429