Which Country Has the Best Health Care in the World?

A preeminent doctor and bioethicist gives an incisive tour of ten health care systems across the globe, in search of an answer to whose is best — and how we can be more like them.

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One thing we can all agree on: America does not have the world's best healthcare, at least not for all its citizens across 50 very different states. But which country does, and what can they teach us?

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Author, physician, and bioethicist, Ezekiel Emanuel has examined the world's leading providers of healthcare.

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Drawing from an analysis of ten countries — Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the UK — the results are in. No health care system is perfect, whether the problem is too many hospital beds in Germany or treating chronic illness in France, and some problems are shared across many countries, from truly addressing mental healthcare to containing the rising costs of chronic care.

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But the lessons from the best healthcare practices allow us to adapt some of the good found in other countries and avoid making the same mistakes as others. Healthcare remains uniquely important to all Americans, and uniquely fraught: here is the best evidence from around the world of what excellence looks like and how we can deliver it here.

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PublicAffairs (March 22, 2022)

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PublicAffairs (June 16, 2020)