The American System of Health Care Delivery is the Best in the World

The American system of health care delivery is the best in the world.

Supporting the statement that US have the best care system would be wrong and an illustration of ignorance of the basic conditions and evidence indicating otherwise. For this paper, I intend to oppose the topic that the United States has the best health care system. According to the World Health Report 2000, the United States was ranked 37^th in terms of performance of the health care system (Murray et al. 2010). The performance of the health care systems is ranked with regard to the level of investments to the public health and medical care. This is considered with respect to the attainment of social objective such as improving health, decrease in health disparities, protection of people from being hit by poverty due to increase medical expenses, and provision of responsive services in a manner that upholds the dignity of the patients.

A study in 2006 identified that USA was ranked top in terms of health expenditure per capita but took position 39 with regard to infant mortality, 43^rd in grown up female mortality, 42^nd for the male mortality and 36^th in the life expectancy (Murray et al. 2010). Such figure supports my argument why the health care system of the US cannot be sad to be the best. 

The following statistics prove that the health care system of US is not improving with the rate that other nation are doing. Around 1974, the mortality rate for male aged 15-60 years was for US was at par with that of Australia and a third lower than that of Sweden. The annual decrease in the mortality rate of this age cohort in Australia has been more that in the US. By 2006, the rate in Australia had been brought down to  a rate lower than that of Sweden while that of Sweden was 40% less than that of the US (Murray et al. 2010). These statistics would have been different had the health care system been better than in other nations.

Direct comparison of the healthcare system of US and that of members of the Organizations for Economic Cooperation and Development  in the aspects of healthcare spending, supply, utilization, prices, and the health results indicate that the US system lag behind and requires great improvement.

United States recorded the highest private spending on health care as compared to residents of other nations in 2013. The expense considered was used to cover doctor’s visit, purchase of drugs and deductibles for health insurance. Among the members of OECD, only Swiss had larger spending as compared to that of US. France and Netherlands only spent less than a quarter on what US spent on an average US resident (Commonwealth Fund, 2017).

Despite the heavy spending in healthcare system, the system covers fewer residents. The public expenditure in US in 2013 stood as $4197 per capita compared to Norway $4981 and Netherlands $4495. On factor to note here is that, among all the countries considered, only US did not have a universal healthcare system. . By 2013 only, 34% of the residents were covered by the public programs of Medicare and Medicaid (Commonwealth Fund, 2017).

Even with this high expenditure on public health, it was noted that American made fewer hospital and physicians visit. It was observed that US had less practicing physician than the median OECD in 2013 that stood at 2.6 as opposed to 3.2 physicians per 1000 population. American only managed an average visits to physician at four visits in contrast to OECD median that was 6.5. Some countries had high rates such as Canada with 7.7, and Japan at 12.9. For this, we cannot claim that America had the best health care system (Commonwealth Fund, 2017)