Question

The United States spends more for social services per capita than most other developed countries.

True

False

Answer 1

The U.S. spends more on social service especially health care than any other high-income country .that is true.

In 2019, the U.S. and Switzerland were in the top two spots, spending 17% and 12% of GDP, for health care respectively. Third place goes to Germany, with 11.7%, followed closely by France, with 11.2%.

In 2018, the U.S. spent 16.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, nearly twice as much as the average  Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD) country.

• The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy
• Suicide rates are the highest in the U.S.
• U.S. adults have the highest chronic disease burden
• The U.S. has the highest rate of obesity
• The U.S. has a high rate of MRI scans

The United States spends more on health care than any other country. This country  has poor health outcomes, including low life expectancy and high suicide rates, compared to our peer nations.

. The U.S. could look to approaches taken by other industrialized nations to contain costs, including budgeting practices and using value-based pricing of new medical technologies. Approaches that aim to lower health care prices are likely to have the greatest impact, since previous research has indicated that higher prices are the primary reason why the U.S. spends more on health care than any other country.

The U.S. has a relatively lower rate of physician visits compared to other nations. This is surprising given U.S. adults’ seemingly greater health needs.

The U.S. should promote incentives to use effective care and disincentives to discourage less-effective care.

In sum, the U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world, but Americans continue to live relatively unhealthier and shorter lives than peers in other high-income countries.