United States trails other rich countries on almost every measure of health, report finds

The US is a distant outlier in delivering quality healthcare, a study has found, lagging far behind 10 other high income countries in a broad comparison that measured outcomes, access to care, preventive services, waiting times, and the responses of thousands of doctors and patients to survey questions.

Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia took the top three places in the Commonwealth Fund’s survey of 11 countries.1

The US brought up the rear despite spending a much higher proportion of its gross domestic product on healthcare—16.8% compared with an average of 10% in the other nations: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

“In no other country does income inequality so profoundly limit access to care as …