Fragmented U.S. health care system causes preventable deaths, unnecessary costs: new study

WASHINGTON, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Though Americans spend more on health care than people in any other nation, in any given year, the U.S. medical insurance system's fragmented structure causes many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs, a new study has found.

According to findings published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, more than 338,000 deaths from COVID-19 alone could have been averted if universal health care had been available from the start of the pandemic until mid-March 2022.

"Health care reform is long overdue in the U.S.," Alison Galvani, the study's lead author and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at the Yale School of Public Health, was quoted by Scientific American as saying.

"Americans are needlessly losing lives and money," Galvani said.