The Commonwealth Fund continues to highlight women’s health issues in the United States with international comparisons and critical reports on the maternal health crisis. Most recently, it conducted an updated international comparison between the U.S. and other wealthy countries to see how we fare in women’s health care. Unfortunately, not much has changed.
In its latest issue brief, using recently released federal data, the Commonwealth Fund compared selected measures of health care access and outcomes among women in high-income countries. The researchers used data from four sources for the comparison, including the Commonwealth Fund’s 2023 International Health Policy Survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Vital Statistics System, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Burden of Disease. Collectively, the four sources provided data for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Chile, Japan, Korea, Norway, and Sweden.
RELATED: A state-by-state look at women’s health care in the US
Here are nine key findings:
- Women’s life expectancy at birth is at least two years lower in the U.S. (80 years old) compared to the other high-income countries.
- Women in the U.S. have the highest rate of avoidable deaths (270 deaths per 100,000 lives). Women in Japan and Korea are the least likely to die from a preventable or treatable cause (84 per 100,000 and 81 per 100,000, respectively).
- Women in the U.S. are the most likely to die from cardiovascular disease (115 deaths per 100,000 lives). This rate is more than double that of some of the other countries.
- A greater proportion of U.S. women take four or more prescriptions regularly (27 percent), with Black women taking multiple prescriptions at the highest rate (37 percent). In Germany, fewer than one in 10 women take multiple prescription drugs (eight percent).
- Half of women in the U.S. and Australia reported having a mental health care need.
- Hispanic and Black women in the U.S. were the most likely to report having at least one unmet social need, such as having enough food, having enough money to pay rent or mortgage, having a clean and safe place to sleep, or having a stable job or source of income.
- The U.S. is the only country with an uninsured rate for women. More than a quarter (27 percent) of U.S. Hispanic women reported lacking health insurance.
- Women in the U.S. are the most likely to skip needed care because of the cost (51 percent). The Netherlands only had 15 percent of women with this barrier.
- Women in the U.S. are the most likely to have problems paying medical bills (53 percent). Only one in 10 women in the U.K. reported this issue.
“The U.S. health care system too often fails women,” researchers wrote. “American women face increasing threats to reproductive health care access, including abortion services, that could have a lifelong impact on physical and mental health. While the nation awaits the outcomes of legal challenges to state restrictions on these services, U.S. policymakers have a number of options to improve health and health care for women.”