The ICU at a hospital in Marseille in November 2020.
Photographer: Jeremy Suyker/Bloomberg
Prognosis
The World’s Best Health Systems Are Now Failing Their Patients
The coronavirus pandemic exposed weaknesses in the European Union’s much-envied health care systems, and time is running out to fix them.
As recently as 2000, France, Italy and Spain were ranked as having the best health care systems in the world. But more than two decades and a global pandemic later, that picture has changed. Stalled-out funding combined with the rising costs of caring for aging populations now mean that European systems are struggling to fulfil their promise of fair and equitable cradle-to-grave services.
And in the near future, there may be fewer front-line workers around to help correct course.