The United States does a poor job of evaluating Medicare hospitals: perhaps Australia can help

The United States spends more money per person on healthcare than does any other country in the world, and this rate of spending is increasing. Healthcare expenses currently absorb more than 12 percent of the American gross national product, and recent projections indicate that such expenses will exceed 16 percent by the year 2000. By the year 2005, the U.S. Medicare program is expected to absorb more of the national budget than either Social Security or defense. One justification for the high rate of spending has been that, for those who receive it, U.S. healthcare is the best in the world. There is, however, no way to validate this view because no national or international agreed-upon set of criteria for measuring quality of care exists. Proponents of the American system seem to assume that if it costs more, it must be better. If this is true, it is certainly not reflected in American consumer satisfaction: a recent poll of citizens of ten developed countries indicated that Americans were by far the least satisfied with their healthcare system. This article focuses on the American oversight of Medicare hospitals to determine it, in this narrow area, dissatisfied American consumers are justified.