Two Americas
David Blumenthal, The Commonwealth Fund
Economists at Harvard University recently reported that geography is a particularly powerful predictor of economic mobility in the United States. For those of us who work in health care, this should not be surprising: we already have abundant evidence that where you live matters a lot when it comes to health and the quality of care you receive. Increasingly, the U.S. is not one country, but two-divided geographically by persistent, troubling differences in people's access to affordable, high-quality health care. This is a clear message of The Commonwealth Fund's state and local scorecards on health system performance, which have documented these divisions over much of the past decade. And the message will be reinforced in our newest health system scorecard, which focuses on low-income populations in the U.S. (look for it next month). Certain regions of the country-the Northeast and Northwest, parts of the Midwest, the North-Central states-regularly perform well. Other regions-generally the South, Southeast, and Southwest-perform poorly. The former have health outcomes that are among the best in the industrialized world. Results in the latter look more like those of developing countries in South Asia, South America, and Latin America. Read the full post here.