CEOs: US Lags World On Healthcare Value For Money

By Steve Hynd

Yesterday the Business Roundtable, which represents CEOs of major companies, released their report on healthcare value for money in the US, G% nations and three rising countries (Brazil, India and China). Rather than just looking at costs, the report (PDF, Executive Summary) factored healthcare benefits in and found that Americans get less value from their healthcare spending than their business rivals by a wide margin. (H/t Kat)

The United States is 23 points behind five leading economic competitors: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France. The five nations cover all their citizens, and though their systems differ, in each country the government plays a much larger role than in the U.S.

The cost-benefit disparity is even wider — 46 points — when the U.S. is compared with emerging competitors: China, Brazil and India.

"What's important is that we measure and compare actual value — not just how much we spend on health care, but the performance we get back in return," said H. Edward Hanway, CEO of the insurance company Cigna. "That's what this study does, and the results are quite eye-opening."

Higher U.S. spending funnels away resources that could be invested elsewhere in the economy, but fails to deliver a healthier work force, the report said.

"Spending more would not be a problem if our health scores were proportionately higher," Dr. Arnold Milstein, one of the authors of the study, said in an interview. "But what this study shows is that the U.S. is not getting higher levels of health and quality of care."

Unsurprisingly for a report sponsored by an organisation that includes the CEOs of major health insurers, pharmacy companies and healthcare corporations among its numbers, the study doesn't identify the obvious answer for this cripllingly expensive shortfall - universal, single-payer healthcare, but instead advocates "creating an open, all-inclusive private market for health insurance and replacing today’s fragmented state-by-state market with multistate markets." They see the problem clearly, but the profit motive gets in the way of seeing the solution.

That motive, transmitted to their paid political apparatchiks, is what really lies behind claims that "the private sector will always outperform the government". Yet offer a truly universal private healthcare option- as Democrats have done by advocating to let citizens buy into a government-sponsored health plan similar to the one federal lawmakers enjoy, and suddenly it's all "competition will be destroyed if the government gets involved". David Sirota writes:

Don't Republicans insist that "competition solves health care?" Yes, ad nauseam.

Haven't they been telling us that government programs are obviously worse than private health insurance? Yes again.

Then, don't they welcome a private-versus-public competition, believing that the former will easily trump the latter? Well ... uh ... no.

As I said, this is truly perplexing.

In one breath, GOP Jekylls say government medical plans will be inefficient, inferior to private insurance and thus hated by Americans. In another breath, Republican Hydes effectively admit that government programs would be so efficient, superior to private insurance and loved by Americans that they will attract most consumers and dominate a health care competition.

Of the two assertions, of course, the latter is closer to the truth - and the GOP knows it.

A public healthcare system would save at least $2 trillion in annual healthcare costs for American, and create more value-for-money services. But since a large chunk of that $2 trillion would represent lost profits for healthcare corporations; the Business Roundtable, healthcare providers and politicians addicted to healthcare industry campaign contributions cannot admit it. They're holding back wider economic recovery and putting you at risk to line their own pockets.