DALLAS TWP. American health care is broadly moving in the right direction, Susan Dentzer believes, but the system as a whole fails to provide value for the vast amounts of money spent on medical treatment in this country.

As a country, we spend more per capita than any other on health care and we dont have very good health outcomes to show for it, said Dentzer, a journalist and Washington, D.C.-based health policy adviser who will speak Oct. 4 at Misericordia University.

Her speech, The Future of Health Care in the United States, is part of the Misericordia University Annual Health Care Lecture Series.

The big issue on the table now, Dentzer said, is the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act sometimes dubbed Obamacare for which open enrollment is scheduled to begin Oct. 1.

But Dentzer, a senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and health care analyst for PBS NewsHour, acknowledged in a recent interview with The Times Leader that it is just one consideration as the United States struggles to contain costs and improve the overall health of the American public.

In 2010, for example, Dentzer made headlines when she said America was guilty of child abuse for allowing childhood obesity rates to skyrocket.

Embracing more healthy lifestyle choices would go a long way toward making us healthier as a people and paring down mushrooming care costs, in her view.

Even if we get the best possible results from our health care system if we dont do something to stem the tide of obesity, chronic illnesses, of relatively poor health choices, then all bets are off, she said.

Even the smartest of us tend to make poor choices day-in and day-out, and those choices are conditioned by our environment, Dentzer said, adding that lives lived in cars, busy schedules and even which foods are given the best promotion in stores and restaurants can have a ripple effect on our health.

As well, Dentzer sees room for improvement in where, when and by whom health care services are delivered.

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Health care policy expert to speak at Misericordia