In many countries, primary care clinicians serve as the foundation for health care and the “gatekeepers” for more specialized referrals. A new international survey of primary care physicians in eleven countries finds that American doctors are significantly behind many of their counterparts elsewhere in providing access to high-quality care and use of health information technology, [...]

Over the summer, Health Affairs Blog posts on the Medicare Advantage debate in Congress claimed top spots on the most-read list for July and August. A late August post by Henry Aaron looked at how Obama and McCain would cover the uninsured. Another late August post by Len Nichols on calculating the cost of covering [...]

The Netherlands, which combines mandatory universal health insurance with competition among private health insurers, has been frequently cited as a possible model for reform in the United States. You can read Wynand van de Ven and Frederik Schut’s examination of the Dutch experience (free access until May 27) in the May/June issue of Health Affairs, a thematic [...]

In interviews with Health Affairs, government ministers in Germany and the Netherlands talk up market-oriented refinements to their universal health insurance systems for the future. But the news from Europe isn’t all happy: an unsettling survey in the United Kingdom finds that some physicians believe that the market will unravel the government-owned and -operated National [...]

Comparing health systems, the growth of U.S. health spending, and proposals to fix Medicare physician payment topped the January-February 2008 most-read list for the Health Affairs Blog. Sign up for email or RSS feed alerts to stay on top of new postings. Additional commenting always welcome.

U.S. Worst At Beating Death From Treatable Illness
by Jane Hiebert-White
HEALTH [...]

Does the fact that The Diving Bell and The Butterfly won the Golden Globe award for the best foreign movie tell us anything about French health care? Or does it tell us more about movies about health care, the artistic French vs. “The Ugly American”?
For the upcoming Academy Awards, Michael Moore’s health care movie, SiCKO, [...]

In a comparison of 18 countries, the United States ranked at the bottom for number of deaths that could have been prevented by timely and effective health care. Not only were U.S. rates among the worst, the rate of improvement from 1997-98 to 2002-03 was the smallest.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by the 2007-08 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellows. The lead authors are Andreas Gerber and Rhema Vaithianathan. Additional authors include Kalipso Chalkidou, Richard Gleave, Peter Hockey, Geraint Lewis, Ruth McDonald, Neil MacKinnon, Peter McNair, Claudia Sanmartin, and Stephanie Stock.
While policymakers in the U.S. have long recognized the benefits of looking overseas for [...]

The rising prevalence of obesity is said to be threatening to drown the health care system under a wave of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. So some policymakers have suggested taxing foods high in saturated fats as a way to steer consumers clear of snacks that are bad for them and perhaps offset coming health care [...]

What role should the U.S. government play in confronting global health challenges? What are Congress’s priorities for the reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and how much should be invested in research to help stem the AIDS pandemic? How can we protect 150 million people globally from suffering financial catastrophe each [...]

Whether it is ascertainable as fact or merely an impression, recent findings from the legendary Whitehall studies in the U.K. strongly suggest an interest in the quality of human relationships in society relative to health that is all but unimaginable in the United States. The New World is trying to get a grip on racial, [...]

Two kinds of American exceptionalism emerged from last week’s release of the Commonwealth Fund’s International Health Policy Survey, which focused on primary care and was published November 2 on the Health Affairs Web site.

The American health care systems perform impressively, producing what they are designed to deliver: cost inflation, inefficiency, and inequity. At regular intervals, local pundits declare that the outcomes of the incentive structures in the constituent parts of the systems are unacceptable, usually emphasising that “the nation cannot afford to spend 16 percent of GDP on [...]