The Commonwealth Fund released a report, Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System, to compare health system performance in 10 countries, including the United States, to glean insights for United States improvement. It conducted an analysis of 70 health system performance measures in five areas: access to care, care process, administrative efficiency, equity, and health outcomes.
The analysis found that the top three countries are Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, although differences in overall performance between most countries are relatively small. The only clear outlier is the United States, where health system performance is dramatically lower. The United States continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its health care sector. While the other nine countries differ in the details of their systems and in their performance on domains, unlike the United States, they all have found a way to meet their residents’ most basic health care needs, including universal coverage.