U.S. needs smarter spending to avoid health care paradox: Hill

NEW YORK, June 8 (Xinhua) -- The United States pays more for health care than any other country on the planet, yet outcomes lag those of other developed nations, reported The Hill on Tuesday.

"This embarrassing fact keeps us obsessed with cutting health care costs, presumably so that lower costs better reflect the lower value of our health care investment," said the report.

New data compiled by the KFF-Peterson Health System Tracker provide a timely reminder of the urgency to change the U.S. spending patterns by investing in non-medical drivers, or social determinants, of health, according to the report.

New data show that from 2011 to 2019, although the United States increased its investment in social spending, it continued to overinvest in health compared to social spending, while comparable countries continued to do the opposite, it said.

"Over that same period of time, U.S. health outcomes continued to fall behind those of comparable countries, and in some cases, the gap grew larger," it noted.

The United States should push more dollars upstream to improve its health outcomes. "If we're going to spend nearly 20 percent of GDP on health, we deserve better value," it added.