Can we learn from international health care systems? Yes we can.

If one were to listen to the media coverage over health care it would be difficult to grasp what the key issues in the debate are. One might easily confuse discussions of death panels, rationing of care, and ferocious town hall meetings to be the lynchpins of reform. Moreover, because a vast majority of the media coverage has revolved around the “he-said she-said” political horserace, the discussion of reforming America’s health care system has had the tendency to come across as beltway inside baseball, where the jostling over political talking points and out smack-talking the other side is an end in-and-of-itself. No wonder recent polling has shown a decline in the public’s interest in reform. Yet reform is desperately needed. Stepping back and looking at the overall figures emphasizes the point.

According to a recent OECD report the United States spends more per GDP on health care than any other OECD country—we spend 16 percent a full 5 percentage points higher than France which comes in second and nearly twice the OECD average of 8.9 percent. Yet 47 million Americans, or one-in-seven people, are left without insurance (also the highest percent uninsured out of OECD countries). Despite our massive spending there are fewer physicians per capita than most OECD countries. In 2007 the United States had 2.4 physicians per 1,000 citizens where the OECD average is 3.1. Life expectancy in the United States stands at 78.1, almost a full year less than the OECD average of 79. Similarly, infant mortality (6.7 per 1,000 births) is higher than the OECD average (4.9) and more than twice as high as that of Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Luxemburg and Japan.

It is simply astounding to think that, in the country most known for well-oiled markets and economic efficiency, we spend nearly twice the average of other developed countries. And, in one of the richest societies the world has ever known, 25 percent more children die than the international average. The United States' health care system is arguably the largest public policy failure since the Vietnam War (if not even longer). While there is no shortage of ideas for how to repair the disastrously broken system, there is a severe shortage of serious conversations over reform. A good starting point might be to ask—given we so far worse than many other nations—what makes our system so different? Again, depending on whom you ask you’ll likely to get a wide range of answers, but looking at least one statistic might offer at least a conversation starter, if not a solution: Private insurance accounts for 35 percent of total health care spending in the United States, which is significantly higher than that of other OECD countries. Indeed, excepting France and Canada, no OECD country spends over 10 percent on private insurance.

This is not to say private insurance is the only problem with our system or that solving issues revolving around private care (pay for quantity of services over quality, pre-existing condition clauses—something unheard of elsewhere around the world, etc.) are sufficient to mending our system of care. The point is if we are serious about creating a better health care system to care for our parents and to be inherited by our children a necessary starting point is to ask where we fail compared to our international friends and what others are doing that we are not. There is an unfortunate mantra of American politics that we have nothing to learn from the rest of the world, this mentality is unproductive, un-analytical and should be avoided in the health care debate.