There's an important new book out by T.R. Reid called "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care". Mr. Reid was interviewed by Teri Gros last night, and made many interesting points about how bad American health care is when compared to the rest of the industrialized world. Two points particuarly struck me-
1. The latest Republican scare tactic is the absurd lie about a government-run health system "pulling the plug on Grandma". Reid checked the statistics and here's what he found: if you live in an industrialized country and reach age 60, you statistically have a certain number of years left, on average, before you die. Of all the industrialized countries in the world, all of which (except the United States) have government-run health care, in which country do you have the least amount of time left to live (e.g. -who pulls the plug on Grandma soonest)?
America.
2. People everywhere complain about health care. Anecdotally, Mr. Reid found that when people in other countries complain about their government-run health care system, an effective rejoinder is, "Well, would you rather have a corporate-run, for-profit system like they have in America?". Everybody's answer is "No!".
Nobody else wants a system like ours.
I wonder why?
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When overseas, I used to have people ask me if the horror stories about folks losing everything they'd ever worked for in their entire lives to try to cover the cost of health care were true. Nobody envies us our health care. And, some countries have moven ahead of us on the research because the larger share of money going into pharmaceutical research is legal research on how to keep a drug from being eligible to have a generic, instead of that quest for new treatments to end disease that the commercials so like to crow about.
ReplyDeleteI fucking hate our health care system. Hate it. I'd take the UK's National Health over our system any day of the week.
Hell no! Leave my health insurance alone. I like paying co-pays every time I walk into the place and yet receive almost countless bills for every stinking test they might perform. I actually think I paid $5.00 for a tongue depressor once. After accounting for all other expenses on one visit all that was left was that piece of wood. Throw in the cool denial of treatments for existing conditions and surging premiums that grow faster each year and we can't get a better health care system.
ReplyDeleteAdding this blog to my blogroll, Colonel.
We certainly don't want one like yours, but our governments (of both flavours it has to be said) seem hell-bent on giving us one. The frustrating and brainfogging thing is that people are too stupid to realise it's happening.
ReplyDeleteI guess that goes hand in hand with why governments don't want to spend money on education either - keep 'em stupid and you have a better chance of pulling the wool over their eyes...