Findings from the release of the first annual Business Roundtable Health Care Value Comparability Study show that the costs and performance of the U.S. health care system have put America’s companies and workers at a significant competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. The study was released by the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers whose companies provide health care for more than 35 million Americans.
The report combines internationally reported measures covering both spending on, and the performance of, national health care systems to assign a value to the U.S. health care system compared with important global competitors. On a weighted scale, the results show that U.S. workers and employers receive 23 percent less value from our health care system than the average of five leading economic competitors – Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France (the “G-5 group”) – and 46 percent less value than the average of emerging competitors Brazil, India and China (the “BIC group”).
The study also shows that, as a group, the G-5 countries spend approximately 63 cents for every dollar the United States spends on health care – yet the health of the U.S. workforce lags by 10 percent in a composite measure. The gap is even wider in relation to rising economic powers: the three BIC countries spend just 15 percent of what we spend on health care, yet the health of the U.S. workforce trails that of BIC countries by five percent.