It’s no secret that the US has some work to do on health care systems and health insurance programs.  The article “US Scores 64 out of 100: Commonwealth Fund Commission National Health Care Scorecard” from the Medical News Today website, details the third national scorecard report completed by the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.

Simply put, the scorecard discovered that the US as a whole did not improve when compared to the best performers in this country and others.  There were some small pockets of improvement, but nothing the report deemed significant.  The report also found that there was a great deal of erosion in the area of health care access as well as affordability.  Health care costs rose much faster than family income, and major medical insurance quotes were higher as well.

The scorecard did highlight some good aspects of health care in the US.  There were notable gains in the quality of care in certain areas throughout the US.  Hospital quality for treatment of health disease, pneumonia and surgical complication prevention has improved greatly throughout the country since hospitals started publicly reporting their quality data through a federally regulated website.  Moving forward, The Affordable Care Act hopes to address many of the concerns highlighted in this report.  For some aspects, it will take years to see substantial improvement, but with time, there should be huge improvements to the US health care system which will benefit millions.

Written by Sam Tabes

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/smartshopper78