New Commonwealth Fund Study Pans US healthcare

There's a summary of the study in Forbes.com:

Some facts we already know:

The U.S. health-care system is fraught with waste and inefficiency, unequal access, and stubborn gaps in quality and coverage, but it also offers opportunities for improvement, according to a new report.

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Access to care remains one of the nation's most intractable health-care problems, the report suggested. Some 45.8 million Americans lack health insurance coverage, and that number is projected to exceed 50 million by the end of the decade.

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Though the U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care per capita as other industrialized nations, Americans don't live as long as people in some industrialized countries.

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Dr. James J. Mongan, president and CEO of Partners HealthCare in Boston, said that additional taxes or employer mandates will be needed to finance expanded coverage, an idea that is likely to face continued resistance.

"Progress in the struggle to finance universal coverage will not come easily and will be bitterly fought at every step," he wrote. "I believe progress on health insurance will come only when we as a nation answer the question of what happened to social justice as a moral value."