You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capadiche. I'm Hannah McCarthy

And you know what that music means, don't you, Hannah? I can take a guess.

Why sure you can. Oh sure you can.

Well I'm pretty sure this is Gile's theme from Street Fighter 2,

which would mean this is another round of US versus

where we see how the red, white, and blue measures up against the

rest of the world. You're absolutely correct and today we will see how Gile and

Balrog fair against Cammy, Abigail, Ed, and so many more, we're doing US versus

healthcare. All right, so how did we measure up?

Whoa! All right, so how did we measure up?

Oh.

Well, I'm sorry to say that if you looked at the 13 wealthiest nations in the world,

most of which are the U.S. Canada, Europe, and then Japan

and Australia, New Zealand. We always rank last, both in health status and in quality.

I'm sorry to say but there is actually this organization, the Commonwealth Fund,

that does an annual report measuring the performance of health systems, several health systems, and the title for

2024 was a portrait of the failing US health system.

Alas, despite our wealth and our power and our American creativity and ingenuity, somehow we wind

up having overall the poorest quality of care and the poorest individual health status.

We're sicker than our peers in the wealthier nations and we achieve that last status at a higher price.

I'm Sue Tallison Reinhart.

I am Professor Emerita of Pediatrics in the University of

...