U.S. Health Spending Habits Grab International Attention

The exceptionalism of the United States never ceases to amazecitizens of other countries. Every year Health Affairs publishesthe highlights of spending trends among the thirty industrializednations that constitute the Organization for Economic Cooperationand Development (OECD). And every year this paper attracts alarge and growing international audience. Ready evidence ofthis trend can be found on the online list of the fifty most-readpapers, which is updated each month (www.healthaffairs.org/Most_Read.php).Almost a year after we published the annual OECD paper analyzingthe latest (2003) data on health care spending ("U.S. HealthSpending in an International Context," by Uwe Reinhardt, PeterHussey, and Gerald Anderson), the journal’s tracking systemshowed that this was the most-read paper of April 2005.

The United States always leads all nations in the amount ofmoney it spends on health care, and explanations abound aboutwhy. Truth to tell, there is no constituency with any real influencethat favors constraining these expenditures. In the new OECDtrends paper that leads this issue, Anderson and colleaguesexplore two possible reasons for this higher spending: the constraintthat foreign governments apply to the availability of medicaltreatments; and the role of malpractice litigation and the resultantdefensive medicine practiced in the United States.

Among the other subjects covered in this yearly "variety" issueare developments around ensuring the safety of patients. Papersby David Malenka and colleagues and by Scott Gottlieb recommendmore extensive use of Medicare claims data (Malenka et al.)and the use of new information tools (Gottlieb) to improve thepostmarketing surveillance of high-risk medical devices andthe collection of data on safety.

John K. Iglehart, Founding Editor

What's this?

Home

Current Issue

From the Editor

U.S. Health Spending Habits Grab International Attention