In its 2024 Mirror, Mirror report, The Commonwealth Fund conducted a U.S. health outcomes comparison with nine other high-income countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom). One of the things they looked at was health outcomes. Health outcomes measure how well a country’s health care system helps people stay healthy and avoid dying. They looked at three things:
- Life expectancy: how long people are expected to live at birth.
- Excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic: Deaths that wouldn’t be expected to occur, based on how each country managed the pandemic.
- Preventable and treatable deaths: deaths that could have been avoided with prevention or timely, effective health care.
What did they find? The U.S. had much worse outcomes than the other nine countries. Americans live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths. It isn’t even close.
- Life expectancy in the U.S. is more than four years below the average of the 10 countries.
- The U.S. has the highest rate of preventable and treatable deaths for all ages.
- The U.S. had the highest rate of excess deaths related to the pandemic for people under age 75.
This chart shows the results. Here’s how to read it.
- The vertical axis (up/down) shows “performance” on health outcomes. A country higher up the chart is doing better.
- Each dot is one country, labeled (e.g. AUS = Australia, SWIZ = Switzerland, U.S. etc.).
- The horizontal lines show the average performance of the best three countries and all nine (not including the U.S.), so you can see which country is near the top, middle, or bottom.
Of the 10 countries studied, Australia, Switzerland, and New Zealand had the best health outcomes. The U.S. had the worst health outcomes.
Why does the U.S. health system perform so poorly? There may be a number of reasons. Each of these countries has different systems for delivering health care. But there’s one thing they all have that the U.S. does not – universal coverage. Everyone in these other countries has access to basic health care, regardless of their income or employment status.