America needs healthcare reform, just not the type that Obama, Pelosi, and company have come up with, which includes rationing, government intervention, taxpayer-provided abortion, coverage for illegal aliens, suicide counseling sessions for the elderly, etc, not to mention the fact that we cannot afford this costly plan. Interesting how tort reform is nowhere to be found in Obama Care, when that should be a significant part of the change that needs to take place.
With the debate over Obama Care going at a furious pace, let’s examine some key facts comparing current American healthcare with that of our nations. Based on this study, we have a superior healthcare system to that of Canada and Europe. Do we really want to go the way of inferior medical care?
Read from National Center for Policy Analysis:
10 Surprising Facts about American Health Care
“Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers and academics alike are beating the drum for a far larger government rôle in health care. Much of the public assumes their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. However, before turning to government as the solution, some unheralded facts about America's health care system should be considered.
Fact No. 1: Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers.[1] Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K. and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
Fact No. 2: Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians.[2] Breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher and colon cancer mortality among men is about 10 percent higher than in the United States.
Fact No. 3: Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries.[3] Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit are taking statins, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons and 17 percent of Italians receive them.
Fact No. 4: Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians.[4] Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate and colon cancer:
*Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).
*Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a pap smear, compared to less than 90 percent of Canadians.
*More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a PSA test, compared to less than 1 in 6 Canadians (16 percent).
*Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with less than 1 in 20 Canadians (5 percent).
Fact No. 5: Lower income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report 'excellent' health compared to Canadian seniors (11.7 percent versus 5.8 percent). Conversely, white Canadian young adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower income Americans to describe their health as 'fair or poor.'[5]
Fact No. 6: Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the U.K. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.[6] All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.[7] In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.[8]
Fact No. 7: People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and British adults say their health system needs either 'fundamental change' or 'complete rebuilding.'[9]
Fact No. 8: Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the 'health care system,' more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared to only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).[10]
Fact No. 9: Americans have much better access to important new technologies like medical imaging than patients in Canada or the U.K. Maligned as a waste by economists and policymakers naïve to actual medical practice, an overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identified computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade.[11] [See the table.] The United States has 34 CT scanners per million Americans, compared to 12 in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has nearly 27 MRI machines per million compared to about 6 per million in Canada and Britain.[12]
Fact No. 10: Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations.[13] The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single developed country.[14] Since the mid-1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to American residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined.[15] In only five of the past 34 years did a scientist living in America not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.[16] [Click on the link above to see the table.]
Conclusion. Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.”
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OK, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the healthcare reform currently proposed by various Democrats is inappropriate.
WHAT IS APPROPRIATE?
Where's your proposals? Where are the Republican proposals? Where are the Religious Rightwingnut proposals?
You criticize and criticize and criticize.... but you never once offer a concrete proposal to make the reform that you admit America needs. You have at least twice mentioned the absence of "tort reform" but you have never once outlined what tort reform should look like.
C'mon, Ms.Moore. You have this fabulous open forum here. EDUCATE US. Tell us what we need to do. Tell us how to make the healthcare system better for America.
Or could it be that you're far better bitching about socialism than you are at fixing anything?
Or could it be that you're not particularly adept at criticizing OR improving this country, but you know how to cut and paste -- and the websites you cut and past from only bitch, not fix?
A patient nation awaits your wisdom, Ms. Moore. Offer a fix for our healthcare system, please!
Somewhere between one fifth to one fourth of the uninsured are illegal immigrants, and
another one third are eligible for Medicaid, but never applied for it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my tax money to go to insure illegals who have broken the law when they entered this country. That’s just plain unfair to hard-working Americans who play by the rules.
Mandated health care requirements take freedom away from individuals. Many of the uninsured are young, healthy people in their 20s and 30s, who can afford health insurance, but choose not to invest their income in health care that they believe they will, in all probability, not need. These individuals should have the right to reject costly health insurance, if they wish to do so.
The high cost of health care is a major problem. But, Democrats are using the wrong tactics to solve this predicament. When the government gets involved, the result is expensive, poor-quality medical care. The govt. cannot run anything efficiently or at a low cost. Do we really want the federal govt in charge of something as important as our health care?
A preferable approach would be to use the free enterprise principle, reduce regulation, and add tax incentives. Being able to purchase health care plans that go across state lines would result in more competition, which would force prices to drop. Most Americans are poorly informed about their health care choices because there just is not enough information available to us, as consumers; this should change so we can make better choices. We should be able to find the best quality healthcare at the most affordable rate.
Then, there is the need for tort reform, which is costing doctors a fortune, and those costs are being passed down to their patients. The frivolous law suits need to stop, and the trial lawyers are out of control with their offers to sue without any charge to their client if they lose. Of course, the Democrats will never stand up to the trial lawyers because they are highly financed by all the John Edwards of this country.
BTW, I do support offering healthcare for those with pre-existing conditions.
OK, let's take this a step at a time.
Step One: Kill all the illegals. Check.
Step Two: Eliminate mandates for young healthy people. Oh, but wait. There ARE no mandates now. So, in other words, you want to do nothing on that point. And, since insurers won't be collecting premiums from those young heslthy people who don't require massive outlays of benefits, that means there will be even fewer premium dollars to cover benefit expenses. That's a novel approach.
Step Three: No public option, because the government can't do anything right. Got it. But... uhhh..... we don't HAVE a public option now. So, again, you want to do... nothing.
Step Four: Let free enterprise fix the problem that the free enterprise system has created. Hmmmmm. What sort of tax incentives would help? Giving tax breaks to high income individuals and insurance companies? Who's going to PAY for those "tax incentives"? Allowing insurers to cross state lines. Hey, that's a good one! But isn't that expanding federalism? Insurance regulation has historically been primarily a state function, but you want to federalize it? Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh kaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy.
And we need to get more information into the hands of consumers. OK, nice idea.... but who exactly is going to do that? The government, which you already said can't do anything right? Oh, I know, I know! The free enterprise system!! But... uhhh.... there's nothing to restrict insurers from putting more information into the hands of consumers RIGHT NOW. The fact that they haven't done so kind of indicates that they don't WANT "educated consumers." So... do you want the federal government to force insurers to do this? With the "less regulation" you advocate?
Step Five: Tort reform. Yes, that is, as I said, a good idea. Let's stop frivolous lawsuits! Great. But, how do you determine what's frivolous and what's not, without a trial? Or do we just have a government bureaucrat sit up there in an ivory tower, playing eeney meeney miney moe when lawsuits are filed? America is way too litigious, I'll readily agree, but it's not easy to ratchet us down. Maybe we can just eliminate lawsuits filed by blacks (because their lives aren't worth that much, anyway) and Hispanics (because they might be illegals, anyway)??
What you could do is encourage judges to award lawyer fees for claims found to be frivolous; the laws are on the books now, but judges are very reluctant to do it. But the next step would be to institute a "loser pays" system like Britain. It SOUNDS good, but it's pretty dangerous, legally. A lot of injured people with potentially valid claims won't sue, because they can't afford to lose and pay Giant Insurance Comapny's legal bills in the process. "Loser pays" actually stacks the deck for the insurance companies... which, come to think of it, may be exactly what the fat cat GOP wants, anyway.
if someone rejects health care, because they need the money for something else, you cant just decide to tax them and say "fine we'll take your money anyway then".
and no one is paying for any tax incentives. you give the company's employees a tax break. its an incentive to just pay less at the end of the year. and who knows, maybe give a part time benefits package to some 20 hour a week employees with the saved money.
frivolous cases... who cares, people are idiots and as long as there's a way to snake money, they'll always be there. what are ya gonna do, hire a committee to sift through all the cases before they reach a trial?
Nick:
1. The government sure as heck CAN do something to mandate coverage. Think about auto insurance. How many states have mandatory auto insurance requirements? If it wasn't required, many would choose to go without coverage, to save the bucks.
2. Somebody DOES "pay" for tax incentives. Anytime you give somebody a "break
from taxes, that means less tax revenue for the government from THAT source, so another source has to be found. (Either that, or you can try to continue deficit financing, something rightwingnuts are loathe to do.) Keep that in mind the next time your town trumpets the new employer they're bringing in, with just a few "meaningless" tax incentives. Corporations love doing that: get a 10 or 20 yr tax break, and then pull the same move with another city in another state (or country) after the 10 or 20 yrs are up.
How about starting with imperative insurance for all the children? Maybe covering everyone is a bit too much for a start, but the children - they shouldn't really pay the price for their parents sin...
Julie
Julie, Julie, Julie.... you will NEVER understand the American rightwing if you insist on being compassionate to the WEAK!
Let kids grow up and get a job! Childhood is overrated.
but what i'm saying is... giving a company a break does not mean, we have to catch up with it somewhere else, im sure that happens, but that doesnt mean it has to. it
just means, something else will take a hit, and believe me, there's plenty of useless government expenses going around, i think we can do without. so maybe my argument is more with the method, but, still... giving a company a break does not NEED to mean "compensate from somewhere else" no, how about dropping useless crap we spend money on.
and i dont agree with the auto insurance thing. i see the argument because its a form of insurance and the state regulates it, but if you dont want insurance, you dont have to have it. if you sign that paperwork at the DMV when you get your liscence, you are agreeing that you will have a coverage on your vehicle in the event of an accident. and are punishable by law if you don't. and thats so when mr. smith drives home from work and joey the alcoholic hits him doing 90 mph, mr. smith can get money for his damages to the car, and himself, because joey can't afford a 250,000 dollar lawsuit, but his insurance company can. if i get the flu, it doesnt impact anyone but me, but i pay for insurance, so im entitled to treatment. if joey didnt have insurance, he'd be declaring bankruptcy. and mr. smith probably wouldnt get much from joey's own pockets. we can go without insurance, there'd just be a lot more lawsuits, and probably people taking the law into their own hands. so i wouldnt compare personal health to protection on the highway.
oh, and what about if someone crashed into like, a building, and ruins the lobby, or the front of it. should that business go under because they have to remodel their entire store because some jackass rammed his car through the front wall? not in the least, hence insurance for cars is a must. you can always just decline to have a liscence and drive by your own rules.
and to boot, state mandated insurance... is just that, state mandated. not federally regulated. there's a reason we have 50 states, and its so each one can independently govern itself. and for that matter, there's a reason we dont have state mandated health insurance, because its not a good idea.
ps. enjoy hearing the left side of the argument, always good to get a new perspective.
"giving a company a break does not NEED to mean "compensate from somewhere else" no, how about dropping useless crap we spend money on."
Nick, I see where you're coming from, but you have to look at it from the other perspective (wheter they're right or wrong). Congress NEVER feels like they are "funding useless crap". Sure, some grandtanding congressmen love to poke fun at what THEY think is "useless crap" but there is a reason why that stuff gets passed: everybody thinks that the stuff THEY promote is "useful" and the stuff the other guy promotes is "useless". So, politivs being politics, in order to get my useful stuff passed, I have to vote for your useless crap, and he'll vote for mine.
Which leads to one of two outcomes: either somebody's "useful" stuff gets dropped (and we hope like hell it actually IS "useless crap") OR Congress figures out a way to increase revenue to keep funding everybody's useless crap, in the hope that it's all useful stuff! And they raise revenues by either borrowing, or raising taxes. So, ultimately, giving somebody a tax break HAS to mean it comes out of somebody else's hide. The odds that useless crap gets cut are slim to none.
As for the auto insurance vs. medical insurance requirements,you're absolutely right, the rationales WHY they'd be required are very different. I just used the auto comparison to show you that, yes indeed, the government can require insurance, as they already do. And there's plenty more examples, like malpractice insurance for lawyers and doctors. In order to keep you law or medical license (and lots of other licenses) the government requires you to buy insurance.
Now, why would the government make healthy young people buy insurance when they don't need it?
First, because they're young and healthy and don't think they need it. Odds are, they'll stay healthy (at least for awhile) BUT there's always a chance of a medical calamity. If a young guy falls while rock-climbing, he could be disabled for the rest of his life. Without insurance, he'd be financially bankrupted AND we (the public) would wind up paying his medical expenses.
Ok, but what are the odds, you say? Slim to none? Yep. But there's more reasons to require that healthy guy to buy insurance.
Every insurance fund ever can only succeed if it takes in more money than it pays out. Sick people cost money, usually more than the premiums they pay in. That means that healthy people -- people who won't cost more than they put in -- HAVE to be included, to make the whole group stay afloat. If you let the young healthy ones get away without getting coverage, then all you'll have is the sickies (or at least a much higher percentage of sickies) and the premiums for insurance policies will skyrocket. So it's a social contract trade-off: you pay more than your share now, but in the future (when you get old and decrepit like me) you'll get the break and some other healthy young guy will be holding you up.
i get what you're saying about congress and their perspective and i'm glad we atleast have a chance to vote in people with a positive one to represent us as a whole... go america!
but the government shouldn't make you pay for it. because any other form of insurance is a company. when you see commercials for 35 different insurance companies, thats capitalism at its finest! a lot of people, a lot of options, a lot of money being exchanged, its a beautiful thing. im sure they want the people that are never sick to get their insurance because to them its damn near free money. thats why we see all those commericlas.
those people that don't think they need health insurance, the young ones, aren't putting into the pot, but at the same time, they're not taking out of the pot either. so when they get sick or something happens, our hospital bills/ER taxes and whatever have you cover them. like when you get a driving ticket, and at the bottom it says "EMS Cost" and you go "wait i never needed to go to the hospital", that's covering the young ones and they're infrequent issues that don't have coverage. of those in the 20 - 40 age bracket that DO have coverage and are probably as infrequently ill as those that don't have coverage, they're paying for the 40+ crowd's issues and the issues of the insured that are frequently ill or physically handicapped... along with medicaid and retired military perks. so i do believe there's already a lot in place. and i think i said in another page that some +80% of americans currently insure themselves, and i think thats absolutely amazing. so im not so sure we are in need of a GIGANTIC super duper make-over.
and people are not getting sicker and sicker and sicker by the year. the same percentage of people have the same percentage of problems. polio went away, more people get the different animal flu's... the mumps vaccine, people get disease X, so my question is... why are insurance premiums going up so high that we even need this debate at all? is it prescription drug prices? is new treatment just more expensive now? someone enlighten me on why premiums are where they are, and why it brings people to their most basic qualities of "go for self"?
What's causing medical costs to soar? Technology. We're living longer. And more of us are uninsured.
Technological advances have made medical care incredibly better, but incredibly more expensive. My wife just had a pulmonary embolism. She's been monitored for a month now. It used to be they'd run a chest x-ray every week or so, but now, she's getting weekly CT scans. They are a helluva lot more accurate and more valuable to her physician, but they are probably 10 times the cost of a routine chest x-ray. Doctors want the best info they can get, so a CT scan it is.
And this also gets back to the malpractice issue: if a doctor ordered only a chest x-ray instead of a CT scan and he missed something, he's screwed. He'll be sued for malpractice. So a CT scan it is.
And we're living longer. Good news! But living longer doesn't mean we still don't get sick... in fact, it makes it more likely that we'll experience chronic medical problems as we get older.
More uninsured Americans receiving medical care means higher costs for the rest of us. Doctors and, especially, hospitals have to build it into their costs structures, that more people aren't going to be able to pay their freight. So they add a "fudge factor" onto everybody else's bill. You won't usually see it spelled out on a bill, like you say you see the "EMS cost" on tickets, but it's there.
You also professed faith in the free enterprise system. I agree. Nothing in the current reform will eliminate private insurance companies, though. All the reform is proposing is setting up some sort of publicly-funded alternative option, for those who can't get coverage through a private insurer. Most of the free-market types love to ridicule the government, that the government can't run a business, etc etc etc Well, fine: if the government is so damned inefficient and incompetent, the private insurers have nothing to fear from "competition" from the government option, would they?
I don't have time to fact-check all your so-called facts, but Fact #7 is definitely bogus. I notice that you don't mention how many Americans think their health care system needs to be completely rebuilt. Well, according to this recent article (OECD 2007 Poll), between 10 - 15% of Canadians think their system needs to be completely rebuilt, with 15% for the U.K., 25 - 30% for Germany and 30 - 35% of the U.S: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/americans_fear_canadas_health-.html
Diogenes is full of crap. The government cannot bring the cost of technology down. Did you ever hear of the six million dollar toilet. NASA taught them how to make technogy and every single government technology costs multiple times more than what the private sector can develop. The fact is American's develop the technology here. That explains why other countries have lower cost structures. They haven't been able to develop cutting edge medical technologies that are deployable. So those costs don't show up in those contries healthcare structures.
Too many other errors with the know it all, Diogenes's so-called "facts". Score one for slick talking politicians who carry a half-assed plan. Don't get me started.
Don't bankrupt the country, when we don't have the money. I hope people wake up and realize that this Democrat's ancient art of bloodletting is bad for America.
Put a cap on Tort reform, right after someone sues the hell outta Congressional Democrats for this mistake.
Good luck America!
Well, the biggest cost for any health care system is age related diseases, in fact 72% of the costs are due to this. If we start tackling age related disease, as has been started in the US, the costs should decline, but only from free enterprise can this be done. I know from personal experience, a person in Canada who is over 80 will not get the same care as let say a 45 year old would, "because they are to old and they wouldn't have to many more years in front of them anyway" as one doctor put it.
No public options for the US isn't the way to go.
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