When Cutting Access to Health Care, There’s a Price to Pay
Another assessment, published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine, found
that access to health insurance increases screenings for cholesterol and cancer, raises the number of patients taking needed diabetes medication, reduces depression, and raises the number of low-income Americans who get timely surgery for colon cancer.
A study about equity in access to health care for 21 countries in 2000 revealed
that the United States had the highest degree of inequity in doctor use, even higher than Mexico — which is both poorer and generally more inequitable.
Of course, the dismal health situation is not all the fault of the health care system — which, until the passage of the Affordable Care Act, was the only one in the developed world
that routinely barred access or limited care for millions of people of modest means.
“Each year, other high-income countries are improving their health at a much faster rate than the United States,
and the United States currently ranks lowest on a variety of health measures,” the report by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council noted.
Americans, they found, had the second-highest mortality from noncommunicable conditions — like
diabetes, heart disease or violence — and the fourth highest from infectious disease.
