American Health Care Is Broken. Major Hospitals Need to Be Part of the Solution

American health care is broken. And American health care systems must transform radically to lead the repair. Let’s first look at the data: The U.S. now spends more than $4 trillion a year on health care. That’s nearly 20% of gross domestic product. Yet U.S. life expectancy lags literally dozens of other nations—including Portugal, Slovenia, and Turkey—by as much as seven years. If trends continue, we will drop to 64th in the world in life expectancy by 2040, though we will continue to spend significantly more per capita than nearly any other nation. Diagnosing this failure is not difficult. Nearly all the money we spend on health care goes to pay for medical interventions. But clinical care is responsible for at most 20% of health outcomes. The overwhelming majority of factors that determine an individual’s health are embedded in the world around them: How many bus transfers they need to reach a store that sells fresh vegetables. Whether the windows in their workplace let in light and fresh, clean air. How often they face the stress and pain of discrimination because of the color of their skin. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] These are the social drivers of health—and for far too long, our health care systems have largely ignored them. They’ve ignored them, in part, in pursuit of profit. Billing for cancer treatments makes money. Using institutional clout to demand sidewalks and parks and streetlights in poor communities...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized freelance health Source Type: news