Britain’s NHS is the world’s best health-care system, says report (by Commonwealth Fund)

The National Health Service has been praised as the world’s best health-care system by an international panel of experts who said it was superior to those found in countries which spend far more on health.

The study, entitled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” also described US healthcare provision as the worst globally. Despite investing the most money in health, the US refuses care to many patients without health insurance and is also the worst at saving the lives of people who fall ill, it found.

The Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based foundation produced the report. The fund is respected around the world for its analysis of the performance of different countries’ health systems. It examined 11 countries, including detailed data from patients, doctors and the World Health Organization, the Guardian reported. …

The only serious criticism of the NHS was its poor record on keeping people alive.

The requirement is for the NHS to provide Health Care. There’s no requirement for the provided Health Care to be effective.

If equality is one’s primary criterion of “good”, the NHS probably is the world’s best health-care system.

The fact that it delivers a rather mediocre level of service overall, and a dismal level of service to the elderly, is irrelevant if equality is the objective.

As bad as the UK NHS system may be, it does provide a minimum standard of medical service to all residents at a cost of around 9% of GDP. The pre-ObamaCare system cost the US around 18% of GDP (World Bank Stats.) Americans pay $8500/person/yr versus $3400 in the UK for roughly the same outcomes. (The CW Fund study.) Taking into account Medicare, Medicaid, VA, Indian Health Service, etc, US government health care spending is at least half of that amount. The federal portion alone is $3100/person/yr. State and local governments spend another $700/person/yr. Thus, total US government per capita spending is even higher than UK spending for its NHS that covers the entire UK population.

The fact is that both systems are flawed because they are both government-planned systems rather than market systems. As bad as it is, the UK socialist system does obtain better value than the old US system with its heavy regulation, subsidies, welfare programs, and third-party payments. The simple fact is that the US had a very, very expensive health care system that delivered reasonably good, but not extraordinary, results for most people. Thanks to ObamaCare, it’s going to remain very, very expensive, but quality is going to suffer.

Anyway, there is no way that the US government could replicate the level of NHS performance in the US. It can’t even run the VA hospital system.

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