US Health Issues Sick Care vs Health Care: The Crisis in US Health

Increasingly, the United States is challenging conventional wisdom that wealth = health. Current estimates put US health care spending at approximately 15 % of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest in the world[1], but the health system fails to deliver efficient, effective, and equitable health services. Overall, there is a systemic problem: a huge gap between the care that everyone should receive, and what they actually receive – if they receive any at all. On average, the United States has some of the world's best health indicators, including low infant mortality (7 per 1,000 live births); high life expectancy (78 years); and low maternal mortality (8 per 100,000 births). Additionally, in the two areas shown to have the greatest impact on disease prevention – vaccination rates and access to potable water – the US excels: between 90 % and 95 % of children under one year are immunized against major diseases and 100 % of the urban population has access to improved drinking water; even in rural areas, 99 % of the population enjoys such access.[2] But peeling away at the national averages begins to expose health disparities and health care inequities based on race, age, socioeconomic position, geographic location, gender, and immigration status. Underlying the crisis in US health is the system itself, where 45 million people are uninsured (over 8 million of them children)[3], forcing large swaths of the population to rely on high cost, stop-gap emergency service