THE LEDGER-STAR 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, October 6, 1994              TAG: 9410060648
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY SUSAN FITZGERALD, KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   42 lines

HEALTH CARE: WE PAY MORE FOR LESS

One week after health care reform was declared dead on Capitol Hill, a new international report shows that the U.S. continues to spend nearly twice as much per person on health care as any other country.

Even so, the report found, the United States still stacks up poorly against other industrialized nations when it comes to life expectancy and infant health.

Unlike the United States, the other nations spend far less while providing coverage to all their citizens under their health-care systems.

``No matter how you measure it, the U.S. is pretty much an outlier and it seems to be more and more of an outlier as time goes on,'' said George J. Schieber, a health economist who coauthored the report published Thursday. ``We spend more than any other country ... yet we have 15 percent of our population uninsured and on measurable health outcomes, we don't do well.''

The report compared 24 industrialized countries in Europe, Asia and North America who are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It found that the United States spent $3,094 per person on health-care in 1992, compared to the next biggest spenders, Switzerland, at $2,068 per person, Canada, at $1,949, and Germany, which spent $1,775.

Overall, the United States spent 13.6 percent of its gross domestic product on health-care services in 1992, a third more than Canada spent relative to its economy. In other words, just under 14 cents of every dollar of America's national wealth went to pay for health care. That compares to less than 9 cents on the dollar in Germany and 10 cents in Canada.

But even though the United States is the most lavish consumer of health care, it had the highest percentage of babies born at dangerously low birth weights (7 percent of babies weighed under 5-1/2 pounds in 1991) and it had the fifth highest infant death rate of the 24 countries studied. by CNB