Commonwealth Fund Report Card: US Healthcare System Ranked Against 19 Other Countries

The Story

The Commonwealth Fund published its 2026 report card on US healthcare, measuring the United States against 19 other wealthy countries. The source article reports that the US runs the most expensive system on earth with some of the worst results in the developed world. The author, a clinical professor of medicine at UCLA, also describes a simultaneous global health retreat.

Key Facts

• The US spends 18% of its economy on healthcare, nearly twice the average of comparable nations, and $12,649 per person.
• US life expectancy peaked at 79 years, more than two years below its peers and third from the bottom of the group, above only Mexico and Turkey.
• The US rate of deaths that good care should have prevented is the second worst in the developed world, above only Mexico.
• The US and Mexico are the only countries studied that have never guaranteed coverage to everyone; 27 million Americans have no coverage.
• The US has the fewest primary care doctors per capita.
• Nearly a third of the country (100 million people) has no regular place to seek care until they are sick enough for an intensive care unit.
• Black women die in childbirth in the US at a rate higher than the national rate of any other wealthy country measured.
• Americans who have a regular doctor rate that relationship among the best in the world.
• The US Agency for International Development has gone from about 10,000 staff to fewer than 300; the US has withdrawn from the World Health Organization.
• A Lancet analysis projects that the aid cuts alone will cause 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five.
• An Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo strain is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda; the licensed Ebola vaccine and antibody drugs do not apply to this strain. The World Health Organization declared an international emergency on 17 May.
• The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention learned of the Ebola outbreak about a day before the rest of the world did; in past outbreaks its disease detectives would have been in the room far sooner.
• A hantavirus outbreak surfaced on a cruise ship caused by the Andes strain, a form of the virus known to spread between people. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr assured the public it was “under control”. The federal program built to investigate shipborne outbreaks had its full-time staff cut a year ago.
• Independent analysts project that recent and proposed federal changes will leave 17 million more Americans uninsured by 2034.

Conflicting Reports

The article states that the administration disputes that its cuts hampered the Ebola response, and points to emergency money it has since mobilized.

Still Unclear

Whether the administration’s actions or the hollowing out of federal programs affected the current Ebola and hantavirus outbreak responses is disputed in the source article.

Misconceptions

No widespread misconceptions addressed in the source article.

Key Figures

• Robert B Shpiner, clinical professor of medicine in pulmonary and critical care at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (author)
• Robert F Kennedy Jr, US health secretary

Sources: The Guardian