WASHINGTON (PAI) - The U.S. not only has the most expensive health care in 
the world, but its outcomes are often far lower than results in comparable countries, a top analyst told a forum sponsored by organized labor.

As a result, said Dr. Gerard Anderson of the Johns Hopkins School for Public Health, "I don't see any clinical evidence that we have the best health care in the world." Instead, he said the studies show that while the U.S. has high technology and well-trained staffers, its health care system is broken and costly and needs extensive change.

Anderson told the latest health care forum sponsored by the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees that trans-national data, comparing the U.S. to other advanced nations, shows U.S. health care often lags far behind them.

On measurements ranging from safety to satisfaction to infant mortality to life expectancy, the U.S. ranks at best in the middle of the group of 25-30 member nations of the world's industrialized countries, he told the Oct. 19 session.

We lead, however, in several of 21 separate indicators of specific illness outcomes, such as the five-year survival rate from breast cancer, and in one unwanted area: cost.

"We spend almost $6,000 per person on health care, but that doesn't tell you whether it (the sum) is too high, too low or just about right," Anderson said. To make that judgment requires comparing U.S. results with those of other nations. "The point is that we spend a lot more dollars but our clinical outcomes aren't better than those in comparable nations," he said.

Other results Anderson cited include:

• Hospital spending in the U.S. accounts for 38 percent of all medical spending, more than the percentage of the other industrialized nations - such as Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia - for which comparable figures at comparable institutions, or under comparable conditions, are available. He said the U.S. spends an average of $2,434 per hospital day while the other nations spend less than $1,000.
• Other nations spend far less on overhead. U.S. overhead costs, mostly administrative costs by the private insurance companies, total 31 percent of all U.S. medical costs, Anderson said. That's more than double the percentage spent for overhead in the other nations. The others have national health care.
• U.S. prescription drug prices are about double those of Canada, Great Britain and other nations. But Anderson was pessimistic about cutting drug prices here. Citing his own past sessions before Congress, Anderson said the pharmaceutical companies' wage intensive - and successful - lobbying to convince both Democrats and Republicans that drug price cuts would lead to cuts in research and development funds.
• "We're dead last in efficiency. Some of that problem could be solved, Anderson said, through conversion of medical records to electronic forms and making records available to all practitioners. "None of our patients' doctors know what the others are doing," he said, adding that Great Britain is about to invest $25 billion to create electronic patient records to improve knowledge among doctors.
• Anderson also said that aging of the population appears to have little effect, since some of the other industrialized nations, especially Sweden and Germany, have significantly older populations - and significantly lower costs.