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A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis finds government agencies so far report spending approximately $1.9 billion in funding to respond to the Ebola outbreak internationally. The majority of this spending was by USAID (49%), followed by the Department of Defense (33%), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (18%). The U.S. government enacted $5.
This slideshow charts the recent slowdown in health spending in the United States and other industrialized nations. Some possible causes include economic factors and structural changes to the U.S. health system, such as higher cost sharing in private health insurance and lower payments to providers by Medicare and other public programs.
This slideshow compares mortality rates in the United States and other industrialized countries for seven major causes of death. The data show that U.S. mortality rates for circulatory diseases and cancer have fallen in the past 30 years, driving a decline in the nation's overall rate. However, mortality rates for leading causes of death other than cancer are higher in the United States than the average for comparable countries.
This slideshow examines how cost and insurance affects people's access to care, including decisions to forgo or delay needed care and access to a usual source of care.
This slideshow examines the U.S. health care system and its resources in comparison with other industrialized countries. The data examine the relative number of hospital beds, doctors and nurses in the U.S. and other countries, as well as the availability and use of MRI machines as an example of medical technology.
Medicare Spending – A Look at Current, Short-term, and Long-term Trends 010615 Download View JAMA Infographic…
This Visualizing Health Policy infographic with the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) provides an overview of Medicare spending trends in the present, short term and long term. In the long term, Medicare spending as a share of the economy is projected to grow, and Medicare is projected to lack sufficient funds to pay all hospital bills beginning in 2030.
In general, people in the United States use the health system less than people in comparable countries, and services in the U.S. are consistently more expensive than in countries of similar size and wealth. This slideshow examines price and utilization of several healthcare services, including magnetic resonance imaging, caesarian sections, angioplasty surgery and coronary bypass surgery, through data from the International Federation of Health Plans and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The quality of the U.S. health system is improving in many areas, but comparable countries continue to outperform the United States on key measures. In this brief on the Peterson-Kaiser Health System Tracker, analysts from the Kaiser Family Foundation compile an overall picture of health care quality in the United States, using the best available data from numerous sources on health outcomes, quality of care, and access to services.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared a public health emergency due to the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa, which has accounted for over 13,000 reported cases and 4,800 deaths. Some imported and locally acquired cases in health care workers have also been reported in the United States.
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