Common Sense Healthcare Letters

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February 8, 2010

Regarding Ms Hudson's letter asking what is so scary about healthcare reform. The problem is they way the Democrats are trying to accomplish the reform. You don't need a 2000 page bill the reform healthcare, but you do need a 2000 page bill to re-structure the country under the guise of healthcare. The President's Healthcare reform (Obamacare) will force everyone over 18 to buy Health Ins and have direct access to your bank accounts to make sure it's paid for. The college student who came up with the idea for the "Governement Option", defined it as an incremental step toward single payer; aka Socialized Healthcare. And while socialized medicine may sound good to all of us that pay too much for healthcare, it is bankrupting every country were it exists. The only way socialized medicine has ever worked, is the quality of service has to be reduced. Further the President has backed away from many from his promises, that you can keep your doctor and that health care will not be rationed. Finally, Obamacare was to be paid for by reducing $500 billion from Medicare, claiming the reduced budget will result in better care for seniors. All this was just too much for Americans to swallow. You now have the President blaming the "Just say no" Republicans for the failure of Healthcare reform, even though the Democrats in both the Senate and House have passed healthcare reform bills and did not need one Republican vote until January when they lost their super majority in the Senate. Obamacare is not about lowering the cost of Healthcare; it's about a plan for massive increase in federal governmental control and that's what so scary.

February 9, 2010

Does America have the worst health-care system of the 19 industrial nations? The answer is of course no. When you hear comments like this, the first question you should as is, “Says who?” (Yes, who's on First?) The answer in this case is the World Health Organization (WHO). The ranking criteria was as follows 1) Life expectancy 2) Responsiveness 3) Inequality in health care outcomes 4) Inequality in responsiveness and 5) Inequality in individual spending. It is the last three that results in the US being ranked last. The reason is obvious, if you don't have socialized medicine, then you can not score well with the given criteria. Another problem is, the information needed for such a comparison is not collected from the individual countries, leading Philip Musgrove, the editor-in-chief of the WHO report that accompanied the rankings, calling the figures that resulted from this step "so many made-up numbers," and the result a "nonsense ranking." Life expediency is also misleading; as it's based on differently calculated infant mortality rates, and non-medical deaths that are high in the US such as suicides and homicides and car accidents; if you remove non-medical deaths, America leads life expectancy compared to any other western nation. So lets put these rankings to bed.

Now a quick look at price per patient for Canada and France. In Canada if you have anything that can't be treated by an office visit with a GP, you will be placed on a waiting list, and there is also no recourse if you do not agree with a doctors diagnoses. Canada keeps it's health care costs down through denied care, long waiting lists and lack of access to the latest technology. In France, which has a Medicare type system for everyone, the cost is held down by a fascists type control . The government controls the medical schools, the doctors salaries, the acceptance of malpractice cases, and how much the doctors can charge; the average French doctor makes just a little more than a policemen or fireman, his only perk being they are exempt from the national 40% Social Security Income tax. Even with this level of control, the cost of health care has skyrocketed leading to the financial crisis that currently exists in France today. Much of the higher costs of US Healthcare is a result of research and development, something the French and Canadians are happy to utilize, but don't pay a cent for. There is also the fact the US has highest survival rates for prostrate and breast cancers. You see you get what you pay for.