Health Affairs

Health Affairs, 23, no. 3 (2004): 100-102 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.23.3.100 © 2004 by Project HOPE	New Online   Getting Health Reform Done   After the State of the Union   Incremental Reform   E-Health in Developing World   Most-Read Articles in 2009

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Quality

PERSPECTIVE

There Is No Perfect Health System

Elizabeth A. McGlynn

Extensive research into quality of care in different countries yields no conclusive findings that one system is better or worse than others. Quality does not necessarily vary with financing mechanisms; even countries with single-payer systems have variations in quality. Quality is not directly related to the amount spent on health care, since the highest-spending country (the United States) does not have measurably better outcomes. Investments in the quality measurement and reporting systems in all countries would substantially increase the opportunities to learn from cross-national comparisons.

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