Nisha Kurani, Daniel McDermott & Nicolas Shanosky   Peterson-KFF 8/20/20

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in millions of cases across the globe. The United States has one of the highest death rates due to COVID-19 across the world, and its mortality rates will likely increase. Due to different approaches to containing the virus across countries – as well as the quality and accessibility of health care – we may see diverging rates of mortality, disease burden, and other measures of health outcomes between the U.S. and comparable countries. This chart collection provides a baseline of how the U.S. already compared to similarly large and wealthy countries prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The following charts and a related brief explore a number of different metrics used to look at health outcomes, quality of care, and access to services. While inconsistent and imperfect metrics make it difficult to firmly assess system-wide health quality in the U.S., a review of the available data prior to the onset of the pandemic suggests that in most of these measures, the U.S. continued to lag behind comparably wealthy and sizable countries. As rates of all-cause mortality, maternal mortality, and years of life lost have stagnated or increased over time, the gap has widened between the U.S. health system and those of its peers.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/archive/?post_types=chart_collection