The Commonwealth Fund has issued another indictment of US health care, this one stating that the United States showed the least improvement among 19 countries when it comes to preventable deaths. The new research is published in the January/February issue of Health Affairs and advances their belief that government-controlled health care would be better for U.S. patients than the current system.

The top performers in the survey were France, Japan, and Australia and the authors say there would have been 101,000 fewer deaths in the U.S. if America had been among the top three.

Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at deaths “amenable to health care before age 75 between 1997–98 and 2002–03” and found that other countries saw these types of deaths decline by an average of 16%, the U.S. experienced only a 4% decline.

They state that the measure of deaths amenable to health care, conditions from which it is reasonable to expect death to be averted even after the condition develops, is a valuable indicator of health system performance because it is sensitive to improved care, including the public health initiatives they advocate.

They include diseases such as appendicitis and hypertension, where the medical nature of the intervention is apparent, but also includes illnesses like cervical or colon cancer that may not fatal when treated in a timely manner.

“It is notable that all countries have improved substantially except the U.S.,” said Nolte, lead author of the study. The authors also note that “it is difficult to disregard the observation that the slow decline in U.S. amenable mortality has coincided with an increase in the uninsured population, an issue that is now receiving renewed attention in several states and among presidential candidates from both parties.”

“Cross-national studies conducted by The Commonwealth Fund indicate that our failure to cover all Americans results in financial barriers that are much more likely to prevent many U.S. adults from getting the care they need, compared with adults in other countries,” said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. “While no one country provides a perfect model of care, there are many lessons to be learned from the strategies at work abroad.”