Incidental Economist has a sobering graphic from the OECD evaluation of inequalities in health care access. The U.S. again is an outlier.
People like to believe that we don’t ration care in the US. We do. More than just about any other country, we ration by cost.
Medicynical Note: The conservative right in our country would have you believe that we have the best health care in the world. The questions I would pose is for whom? and what alternative reality world are you talking about?
Our care is the most expensive; our insurance coverage the least available (50 million uninsured); and we lead the world in bankruptcy caused by medical expenses—a category of bankruptcy unknown in other industrialized countries.
What we can say is that the U.S. leads the world in dysfuntionality when it comes to health care—and self delusion.
Medicynic 