Abstract
In the October editorial, the PLOS Medicine Editors argue that the health of poor people in rich countries is of global significance and discuss why Open Access journals are particularly well suited to facilitate research and commentary on this topic. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.
Highlights
Readers may be familiar with reports of a country where economic conditions have pushed the healthcare system toward collapse
The US provides a striking but by no means isolated example of how relative poverty remains a powerful determinant of health in rich countries
That other highincome countries outperform the US in health indicators and in controlling healthcare costs [4] does not change the fact that their own low-income populations experience health problems to an extent that aggregate indicators of prosperity fail to predict
Summary
Readers may be familiar with reports of a country where economic conditions have pushed the healthcare system toward collapse. That country is the United States, where a recent report by the Institute of Medicine noted that ‘‘the American health–wealth paradox is a pervasive disadvantage that affects everyone, and it has not been improving’’ [2]. Income is not the sole explanation for poor health indicators in the US, tens of millions of Americans, characterized in part by race and relative poverty, experience levels of health that are typical of middle-income or low-income countries [3].
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