Although the U.S. spends far more per person on medical care than any other nation, the results have been less than impressive. Relative to other developed nations, the U.S. consistently performs worse on a wide range of health measures, including infant mortality, premature deaths, life expectancy, and prevalence of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses. Many health care experts have pointed to inefficiencies in our health care system as the cause for this paradox. Bradley and Taylor identify another culprit — too little attention to the social, environmental, and behavioral factors that impact health.
The book begins with a summary of the authors’ previous research comparing spending on health care and social services among OECD countries. This research found that when spending on health care is combined with spending on social services, the U.S only ranks in the middle of OECD countries. More importantly, the U.S. is an outlier when comparing the ratio of a nation’s social to health spending, with the U.S. allocating a far greater share of its gross domestic product to health care than to social services. This suggests that the U.S. is shortchanging the social services that help people live healthier lives, including public health, housing, education, community safety, and income support. The authors’ conclusion finds support in their recently published study comparing state spending, Variation in Heath Outcomes: The Role of Spending on Social Services, Public Health, and Health Care, 2000-09, 35 Health Affairs 760 (May 2016), which found that states with a higher ratio of social to health spending had better health outcomes. Chapter 3 of the book brings the data to life by profiling three individuals who incurred significant (and expensive) health problems when their social and behavioral health needs went unmet.
But Bradley and Taylor do not simply argue that the U.S. could get more bang for the buck if it rebalanced spending between health care and social services. Rather, they make the equally important and often overlooked point that the U.S. must do a better job of integrating health and social services. Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of the U.S. health care and social services sectors, highlighting the fragmentation plaguing both sectors. Chapter 4 compares the health and social services systems of the U.S. and Scandinavian countries. The authors make a not wholly convincing argument that cultural and political differences between the U.S. and Scandinavian countries are smaller than generally believed and that the U.S. therefore can learn much from these countries. More usefully, the Scandinavian examples concretely illustrate the value of coordinating health and social services, as well as the importance of assigning accountability for a population’s health to a centralized entity (with locally elected government officials serving this role in Scandinavian countries). Chapter 5 further underlines the potential for synergy between the health care and social services sectors with a description of four organizations in the U.S. that are successfully coordinating health care and social services.
The book also provides some useful lessons for those seeking to better integrate health care and social services. Chapter 6 analyzes previous efforts in the U.S. to integrate health care and social services, namely the push for neighborhood health centers in the 1960s and health maintenance organizations in the 1970s and 80s. The authors explain how both efforts were undermined by powerful interests opposed to these developments and an American culture that values personal responsibility. Chapter 7 highlights other challenges, most importantly how the fragmentation of health care and social services is reinforced by a political system that primarily makes decisions about social services at a local level while decisions about health care services are made at the state and federal levels. Proponents of future efforts to integrate health care and social services will need to consider how best to overcome these political forces.
While the authors do not offer specific prescriptions for how to correct the paradox they identify, their insights teach us that reforming the health care sector in isolation from the social services sector is not the solution. In doing so, they help reframe the conversation about how to improve Americans’ health.
