Study: U.S. care lags industrial countries

WASHINGTON, May 15 (UPI) -- The United States spends more for worse healthcare than other industrialized countries, according to a report released Tuesday.

Although the nation spends about $6,102 per capita on healthcare compared to the median of $2,571 for industrialized nations, the healthcare system was ranked last behind Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity and outcomes in a study by the Commonwealth Fund.

One cause of the poor U.S. ranking, the authors wrote, is that all the other countries studied have systems of universal healthcare access.

Another cause is that the United States lags behind on adoption of health information technology, the report says. The country spends just 43 cents per capita, compared with about $192 per capita in Great Britain.