- Guest wrote:
- Pissedoffvulcan wrote:
- And yet smiling R every nation now that has HC wants rid of it. There budgets are failing because of it. HC is your responsibility not the governments. There are ways to fix HC and not break the bank. As far as this bill being like what the senate not even close this one myth the left is saying and it is not at all. Matter of fact when an amendment was brought up to but congress on this bill the democrats shot it down big time. Simply this is a disaster. Germany, England and China has warned us not to do this.
Um, where did you get this from? I've done several papers on this subject and most other countries are doing better than we are in terms of health care and they do it at a fraction of the cost, per capita, and yield better results.
What I'm guessing you're referring to are the various snippets republicans take, usually out of context, that show that there are various complaints in other systems, but if you poll those same people about whether or not they would want an American/private system, they are overwhelmingly against it.
This whole deabte boils down to a few basic points, which include the fact that: A) Our system costs almost twice as much as the next system and yields lesser results, B) Our system is killing our corporations, because benefits make them non-competitive with foreign corporations (See: Auto manufacturers and "legacy" costs) and C) We are the richest country on earth and the only post-industrial one that allows our citizens to die due to lack of health care....we're also the only one that will allow our citizens to lose everything they have due to a catastrophic health condition.
People attack "Obamacare" and have no solutions of their own. They act as if the status quo is doing just fine and that the rest of the world is inferior in every respect. IMHO, ask the Romans how well that type of arrogance worked out for their empire?
The media and political community have made a big deal out of the fact that the U.S. ranks 37 out of 191 countries on the World Health Organization’s Health Care Ranking System. Is this tool a credible way to compare quality health care delivered in the U.S. vs the rest of the world?
Let’s be perfectly clear about this, the United States Health Care is second to none! Ask the tens of thousands of patients who travel internationally to the US every year for their health care. As an example of the quality of health care delivered in the US, Americans have a higher survival rate than any other country on earth for 13 of 16 of the most common cancers. Perhaps that is why Belinda Stronach, former liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and Cabinet member (one of the health care systems touted as “superior” to the US) abandoned the Canadian Health Care system to undergo her cancer treatment in California.1
But to understand how WHO derives this misleading statistic, which has been ballyhooed widely by both the media and politicians alike, you need to understand how it is created. WHO’s health care rankings are constructed from five factors each weighted according to a formula derived by WHO. These are:
1. Health Level: 25 percent
2. Health Distribution: 25 percent
3. Responsiveness: 12.5 percent
4. Responsiveness Distribution: 12.5 percent
5. Financial Fairness: 25 percent
“Health level” is a measure of a countries “disability adjusted life expectancy”. This factor makes sense, since it is a direct measure of the health of a country’s residents. However, even “life expectancy” can be affected by many factors not related to health care per se, such as poverty, homicide rate, dietary habits, accident rate, tobacco use, etc. In fact, if you remove the homicide rate and accidental death rate from MVA’s from this statistic, citizens of the US have a longer life expectancy than any other country on earth.2
“Responsiveness” measures a variety of factors such as speed of service, choice of doctors, and amenities (e.g. quality of linens). Some of these make sense to include (speed of service) but some have no direct relationship to health care (quality of linens). These two factors at least make some sense in a ranking of health care, but each is problematic as well.
The other three factors are even worse. “Financial fairness” measures the percentage of household income spent on health care. It can be expected that the “percentage” of income spent on health care decreases with increasing income, just as is true for food purchases and housing. Thus, this factor does not measure the quality or delivery of health care, but the value judgment that everyone should pay the same “percentage” of their income on health care even regardless of their income or use of the system. This factor is biased to make countries that rely on free market incentives look inferior. It rewards countries that spend the same percentage of household income on health care, and punishes those that spend either a higher or lower percentage, regardless of the impact on health. In the extreme then, a country in which all health care is paid for by the government (with money derived from a progressive tax system), but delivers horrible health care, will score perfectly in this ranking, whereas a country where the amount paid for health care is based on use of the system, but delivers excellent health care will rank poorly. To use this factor to justify more government involvement in health care, therefore, is using circular reasoning since this factor is designed to favor government intervention.
“Health Distribution and Responsiveness Distribution” measure inequality in the other factors. In other words, neither factor actually measures the quality of health care delivery, because “inequality of delivery” is independent of “quality of care”. It is possible, for example, to have great inequality in a health care system where the majority of the population gets “excellent” health care, but a minority only gets “good” health care. This system would rank more poorly on these measures than another country that had “equal”, but poor, health care throughout the system.
In summary, therefore, the WHO ranking system has minimal objectivity in its “ranking” of world health. It more accurately can be described as a ranking system inherently biased to reward the uniformity of “government” delivered (i.e. “socialized”) health care, independent of the care actually delivered. In that regard the relatively low ranking of the US in the WHO system can be viewed as a “positive” testament to at least some residual “free market” influence (also read “personal freedom”) in the American Health Care system. The American health care consumer needs to understand what the WHO ranking does and does not say about American health. Don’t be fooled by “big government” politicians and the liberal media who are attempting to use this statistic to push for socialized medicine in the United States. It says essentially nothing about the delivery of health care or the quality of that delivery in the US. It does say that, so far, the American health care consumer has at least some personal freedom to seek the best health care available, and is not yet relegated to the “one size fits all” philosophy of government sponsored health care systems.
Alternatives brought up by conservatives over and over but ignored.
following principles.
• We believe there's benefit to decoupling employment from health insurance coverage by ridding the system of tax preferences for health care. This single change would reduce health expenditures hundreds of billions of dollars while easing the burden of health costs on businesses. A great unspoken truth is that health benefits from employers come at the expense of employees' take-home pay. Raising lost wages would be the first of many benefits to American workers and their families from delinking health insurance and employment.
• We think it's critical that power shifts to the American consumer and away from government, employers and insurers, as evidence shows medical care prices come down when patients pay directly. Government should offer tax relief, such as refundable tax credits, to encourage private health insurance purchasing - especially for low-income families. Similar ideas, like those in the Patients' Choice Act recently put forth by Republican members of Congress, are important for Americans to consider. We would do well also to consider creative ideas such as changing federal payments to state-based medicaid plans to individual vouchers or expanding health savings accounts, as has been done in South Carolina.
• Government can lower the price of health insurance and increase choice for Americans shopping for their own coverage by breaking down arbitrary barriers such as state lines and reducing costly and unnecessary coverage mandates. For instance, a national market for car or life insurance means South Carolinians can buy an Ohio policy or New Yorkers one from California. It makes similar sense to allow people to buy a health insurance plan, no matter from what state, that best fits their family and their values.
• We believe it's imperative that we fix our medical liability system. By some estimates, abuse of our legal system costs our health system $80 billion annually. Key tort reforms, including reasonable caps on noneconomic damages; freedom to use dispute resolution outside of our courts; and requiring adherence to medical guidelines as a standard for liability in malpractice trials would be a good start.
• Finally, an estimated 80 percent of all the health care innovation in the world springs from American individuals, companies and universities. It is vital that government support an atmosphere that enhances such innovation and discovery rather than restrict it by overregulation. Specifically, the federal government should promote state-based experiments in health care delivery and technology in Medicaid and Medicare pilot programs (in preventive care and home-based nursing, to name two) and also facilitate and aggressively fund scientific research and innovation in both private and public sectors on advances in diagnosis and treatment as well as in disease prevention.
Other countries with failing Government health care.
BERLIN — Faced with a ballooning deficit in Germany’s health care system, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government decided Tuesday to raise premiums and cut into the profits of doctors, dentists, hospitals and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Lest we forget, Germany was regularly touted by the proponents of ‘healthcare reform’ as a model for the US. ‘Why can’t we be more like Germany,’ the media asked?
Well, it turns out that we will be like them only too soon.
The decision comes after months of wrangling within Merkel’s coalition over a fundamental overhaul of the system and after a series of political blows to the chancellor and plummeting support in the polls.
It sounds like the citizens are unhappy with their version of Obama-care.
While government officials said Tuesday’s decision was an achievement reached harmoniously, the opposition immediately criticized the reform saying it basically consists of everybody paying more.
Gasp! Even ‘the poor’?
Germany’s once highly regarded mandatory health insurance covers about 72 million people, or 90 percent of the population.
The US population is more than four times that of Germany. So you can safely multiply all of the following figures by four to get a sense of how this would compare to American costs.
It has already gone through a series of reforms to stabilize its financial base. Costs are rising swiftly because of ever more sophisticated treatments and an aging population…
And because all of the initial cost projections were simply lies.
To deal with a projected euro11 billion ($13.9 billion) hole in 2011, the government decided to increase premiums to 15.5 percent of workers’ gross pay, up from 14.9 percent with contributions split between employers and employees. The hikes are to bring in about euro6 billion ($7.6 billion).
In addition, Roesler announced cuts of about euro3.5 billion spread out among hospitals, physicians, dentists, insurers and pharmaceutical companies…
Somehow the AP forgot to translate these healthcare cuts into US dollars. They amount to $4.3 billion in cuts to German medical coverage.
Surely that was an inadvertent oversight.
In "Die in Britain, survive in U.S.," the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine, James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain's universal healthcare system.
Among women with breast cancer, for example, there's a 46 percent chance of dying from it in Britain, versus a 25 percent chance in the United States. "Britain has one of worst survival rates in the advanced world," writes Bartholomew, "and America has the best."
If you're a man diagnosed with prostate cancer, you have a 57 percent chance of it killing you in Britain. In the United States, the chance of dying drops to 19 percent. Again, reports Bartholomew, "Britain is at the bottom of the class and America is at the top."
Explains Bartolomew: "That is why those who are rich enough often go to America, leaving behind even private British healthcare." The reason isn't that we sue more in America, and scare doctors into efficiency, or that our medical schools are better. It's more simple than that. "In America, you are more likely to be treated," writes Bartholomew, "and going back a stage further, you are more likely to get the diagnostic tests which lead to better treatment."
More specifically, three-quarters of Americans who've had a heart attack are given beta-blocker drugs, compared to fewer than a third in Britain. Similarly, American patients are more likely than British patients to have a heart condition diagnosed with an angiogram, more likely to have an artery widened with angioplasty, and more likely to get back on their feet by way of a by-pass.
On the availability of equipment, explains Bartholomew, Britain has only half as many CT scanners per million people as the United States, and half as many MRI scanners. With lithotripsy units for treating kidney stones, the United States has more than seven times the availability per million of population than Britain.
Not only is the British equipment in short supply, but much of what's there should be loaded up and carted off to the nearest scrap dump. An audit by the World Health Organization, for instance, found that over half of Britain's x-ray machines were past their recommended safe time limit, and more than half the machines in anesthesiology required replacing. "Even the majority of operating tables were over 20 years old --- double their life span," reports Bartholomew.
Taken as a whole, Britain's universal healthcare system has evolved into a ramshackle structure where tests are underperformed, equipment is undersupplied, operations are underdone, and medical personnel are overworked, underpaid and overly tied down in red tape. In other words, your chances of coming out of the American medical system alive are dramatically better than in Britain.
"Having a diagnosis test beyond an x-ray in Britain tends to be regarded as a rare, extravagant event, only done in cases of obvious, if not desperate, need," writes Bartholomew. "In Britain, 36 percent of patients have to wait more than four months for non-emergency surgery. In the U.S., five percent do. In Britain, 40 percent of cancer patients do not see a cancer specialist."
On how things worked in an individual case, Bartholomew writes of Peggy, an American radiologist, who went to Britain to meet her English boyfriend's family. While she was there, her boyfriend's father found blood in his urine and went to a local National Health Service hospital in which no CT scans or cystoscopy tests were done. The patient had asthma and laid in his hospital bed with breathing difficulties but still didn't see a specialist. He was told it would take six weeks. Short of the six weeks, he was discharged from the hospital. Back home, before his appointment with a consultant came up, he died of an asthma attack.
Bartholomew reports that Peggy was "surprised at how ‘accepting' her boyfriend's family was." What she saw was an unexpected passivity, a lethal submissiveness to systemic incompetence and tragedy, a reaction that seemed poles apart from how things happen in the United States. Explains Bartolomew: "She didn't say too much because she did not want to come across as a pushy, arrogant American but she was thinking that ‘in America we'd go nuts if we were told we would have to wait six weeks to see a specialist. Expectations are so much higher.'"
As a footnote on Canada, the average wait for a simple MRI is three months. In Manitoba, the median wait for neurosurgery is 15.2 months. For chemotherapy in Saskatchewan, patients can expect to be in line for 10 weeks. At last report, 10,000 breast cancer patients who waited an average of two months for post-operation radiation treatments have filed a class action lawsuit against Quebec's hospitals.
Plans for spending cuts have drawn protests from health workers
France must make big changes to its health system in order to cut waste and increase efficiency, a government-commissioned report is warning.
The report says citizens must pay more and doctors must alter their behaviour.
Failure to do so could add 66 billion euros a year to France's public budget deficit by 2020, it adds.
The warning comes after thousands of health workers protested on Thursday over staff shortages and the "creeping privatisation" of the health system.
'Badly regulated'
The report was written by the High Council for the Future of Health Insurance, an advisory body set up by the government as it prepares to introduce healthcare reform legislation in June.
PRESCRIPTION BILL
Average French GP prescribes drugs worth 260,000 euros a year
The French use three times as many antibiotics as Germans
They use twice as many anti-cholestorol drugs as Britons
A fifth of health spending goes on pharmaceuticals
It includes representatives from the health insurance industry, trade unions and medical professionals.
The report was given to the Health Ministry on Friday, but details were leaked by the Reuters news agency which saw a copy.
The standard of care provided by French doctors is ranked among the best in the world, but the report says the system is "badly regulated and badly governed".
"The High Council believes that general confusion over who is in charge of what partly explains the excesses," it says.
"Everyone - institutions, healthcare professionals and social security contributors - will have to change their behaviour."
Higher insurance payments?
The report says French general practitioners prescribe on average 260,000 euros' worth of drugs a year.
BUDGET STRAINS
Health spending nearing 9% of GDP
Projected healthcare deficit this year - 10.9 billion euros
Deficit in 2010 if nothing is done - 29 billion euros
Healthcare deficit to account for 20% of total public deficit this year
It says the French consume three times as many antibiotics as the Germans, and more than twice as many anti-cholesterol drugs as the British.
The council also highlights the CSG welfare levy - a charge paid by workers, the unemployed and pensioners - as an area for possible reform.
"The High Council is unanimous in its refusal to turn to massive indebtedness to cover the growth in health insurance expenditure," the report said.
"The CSG, with its large base and the principle of proportionality that underpins it, could seem like a possible answer," it said.
The council said even a structural shake-up of the system would not necessarily rule out the need to raise further revenues.
Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, which set up the council last October to advise the government on healthcare reform, said last week the government had not been planning a rise in the CSG as part of the healthcare reforms.
Growing deficit
The report says an ageing population and the high cost of advanced treatments will help push health spending past 9% of gross domestic product - one of the highest levels in the world.
Number of doctors per 1,000 people
Italy - 4.1
France - 3.3
Germany - 3.3
UK - 2.0
Japan - 1.9
Source: British Medical Association. Figures for 2000
Experts have already warned that a projected healthcare deficit of 10.9 billion euros this year could rise to 29 billion euros by 2010, unless action is taken.
Looking further ahead, the report says the deficit could rise to 66 billion euros by 2020.
Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei has already put forward a plan known as "Hospital 2007" proposing management reforms and a new emphasis on cost assessment.
Problems in the French health system were exposed last year, when a heat wave killed around 15,000 mostly elderly people.
There was also a bed shortage in hospitals in December, when a nationwide flu and bronchitis epidemic broke out.
Anything government touches turns into crap when they try to control the people.
