U.S. healthcare threatened by trio of "mega forces": media

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. healthcare is threatened by a trio of "mega forces", namely untamed inflation, the nursing shortage and the burnout crisis, said a report of American business magazine Forbes.

For two years, the COVID-19 pandemic rattled financial markets, dominated news coverage and disrupted daily life in ways most Americans would never have predicted, said the report published on Monday.

Now, a new disaster looms. American healthcare stands in direct path of the perfect storm, said the report.

Decades of price escalation combined with eroding quality and misused technologies have made U.S. healthcare the "most expensive and least effective" system in the developed world, said the report.

The trio of "mega forces" now threaten to create healthcare's version of the perfect storm. Without urgent and radical solutions, these forces will combine to produce a massive medical disaster -- one that will prove far more destructive and costly than COVID-19, said the report.