U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

The Commonwealth Fund just published a study in the journal Health Affairs, which examines the American health care system versus the experience in other developed countries. The Fund commissioned a Harris interactive poll of nearly 20,000 people in 11 countries between March and June.

Americans still pay more per capita for healthcare than the rest of the developed world, are unhappier with the results and are less healthy than people in other countries.

Some of the findings are eye-opening. A third of Americans say they have gone without medical care or skipped filling a prescription because of cost, compared to 5 percent in the Netherlands, for example. 20 percent of U.S. adults had major problems paying medical bills, compared with 2% in Britain and 9 percent in France, the next costliest country in terms of healthcare. The study found that only in the United States did such a large percentage have trouble paying their health care bills.

"U.S. adults were the most likely to incur high medical expenses, even when insured, and to spend time on insurance paperwork and disputes or to have payments denied," the report says.

About 60 percent or 157 million Americans under 65 get their health insurance through their employers. Roughly 45 million people 65 and older have coverage through the nation's Medicare system.

In the study they claimed that 47 million were without any health insurance. But last week the U.S.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 59 million Americans had no insurance for at least some of the beginning of 2010.

The ten other countries in the survey all provide a mix of public and private insurance. Adults in Britain, Switzerland, New Zealand and the Netherlands were the most likely to be able to get to a doctor the same day or next day when they needed to. More than 90percent of Swiss adults said they could see a doctor that fast, compared with 57% of adults in Sweden and the United States and fewer than half in Canada and Norway.

Interestingly, only 70 percent of adults in the United States or Norway said they were confident they would get the most effective treatment if ill, compared with 90 percent of Britons and 89 percent of the Swiss.

I guess Al Qaeda will have to attack the Swiss now because they envy their healthcare. Have you noticed they are planning attacks on Europe more these days? Maybe they don't envy our freedom anymore.