In 2019, the United States spent 17% of its GDP on health care. This is over 8 percentage points higher than the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average (Tikkanen & Abrams, 2020). Indeed, the U.S. spends 26% of its national budget on health care (McGraw, Lecture 5.1, 2020). Despite this enormous cost, the US has some of the poorest health outcomes amongst comparable countries. For example, the U.S.’s life expectancy is the lowest of comparable OECD countries at 78.6 years (Tikkanen & Abrams, 2020).
The Public Purpose
The Graduate Journal of American University's School of Public Affairs
Mary Gens
Primed for Disaster: How Racial Disparities are Impacting Nursing Home Residents During COVID-19
COVID-19 has hit majority-minority nursing homes the hardest. These racial disparities must be addressed to help nursing home residents through this pandemic.