According to a recent report from financial analysis website WalletHub, cost and access, while always concerns, aren’t the biggest problems for the state’s health care system. Instead, a group of metrics lumped together under a category labeled “outcomes” raised the biggest alarm in the study, “Best & Worst States for Health Care.”
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Overall, WalletHub rated Pennsylvania as having the 18th best health care system in the country.
“According to the CDC, 88.1 percent of the population has a regular place to go for medical care,” the report’s author, Adam McCann, wrote. “But the cost and service quality of that care can vary widely from state to state. The overall health of the population, more advanced medical equipment and a general lack of awareness regarding the best types of treatment, for instance, can all affect costs.”
When it comes to cost, Pennsylvania was ranked as the 16th lowest and was 10th best for access. But for outcomes, a 29th-place ranking landed the state in the bottom half of the U.S.
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That low score for outcomes included poor marks for subcategories such as infant mortality rate, readmission to hospitals, life expectancy, cancer rate, heart disease, diabetes and more.
When it came to cost, Pennsylvania’s average of $115 per visit was 33rd in the country, and $90.46 per dental visit was 18th. The average premium was $533, which is 32nd in the U.S. The share of “high out-of-pocket medical spending” was 12 percent, 11th in the nation, and WalletHub reported that 11.6 percent of Pennsylvania adults had avoided doctor visits because of cost, which ranked 20th in the country.
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Pennsylvania did well in a number of categories related to access, including seventh in physicians per capita, 13th in urgent care centers per capita and sixth in Medicare acceptance rate. The state was 11th in share of insured adults (89 percent), 23rd in share of insured children (95.2 percent), and sixth best in share of adults with no personal doctor (16 percent).
WalletHub asked Amol Navathe, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, to weigh in on the current state of health care in the U.S. Navathe talked about the changing face of medicine as more than something that just happens when a patient and doctor are face-to-face.
“Reform of health care delivery has been one of the major, yet perhaps hidden, successes of health reform,” he said. “Health care organizations and clinicians are now engaged in a major cultural and operational shift where they think about maximizing the value of care outside of just their four walls. The potential here is tremendous and businesses and employers stand to gain a tremendous amount in healthier individuals and reduced health insurance premiums.”
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As for DeLissio’s single-payer health care legislation, its odds for passage are slim. Democratic lawmakers have introduced similar bills in the state Legislature several times over the past decade without any coming particularly close to being enacted.
